Vegas Pro 8 [OLD VERSION]

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review




Vegas Shines, September 17, 2009
By Curtis Charles (Portland, OR United States)
Sony Vegas is a super tool; I lack sufficient superlatives to adequately describe my fondness for this program.

It's biggest strengths are it's audio capabilities, it's ability to mix resolutions and formats on a project, and it's use of multiple processors for rendering. It handles multi-camera with ease and presents a very nice UI for cutting between cameras. The ability to pan around a clip is awesome, and this feature is especially useful when incorporating stills. The audio and video adjustment tools are great too; in audio you can easily adjust volume or change pitch. In video you can boost the colors and lighten the "touch too dark" shots. There's a RAM render preview that's just perfect for verifying a transition or checking timing. The capture tools are awesome! Each camera take is a separate clip, all done automatically and hands-off! No mark in/mark out, unless you want to work that way.

I'm torn on the Media Manager. On the one hand it's super because clips can be tagged and/or commented for easy sorting and grouping. It has a nifty "point to it to preview" feature that makes finding a clip easier. But it lacks thumbnail previews and a mechanism to see what's already been used in the project, so one ends up going back and forth between file views.

It's biggest drawback is that the Protype Titler is very slow, not intuitive, and generally has a clumsy UI. Don't use .TIFF files either; if necessary convert them to JPEG in Photoshop and bring in the JPEG's instead. And the DVD Creator is quite confusing and doesn't multi-thread, so creating a production DVD from a project can take considerable time.

Vegas does require a lot of computer power to run nicely. We have a 2.4 GHz quad core on which it runs super. One thing Vegas does well is adapt to lesser machines. We previously ran on a 1.6 GHz single core and the program down-shifted where it needed to, making reasonable trade-offs. We were impressed that junior high kids were able to produce a project using Vegas with about 20 minutes guidance. Of course, there was considerable set-up required first, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend Vegas as one's first editor. But if you're ready to take off the training wheels and get some real work done, Vegas is an outstanding tool.


I've run other tools and for me, Vegas is by far the best, most powerful, and most flexible.



Ridiculous DRM and poor customer service, bugs, February 26, 2009
By Jean M. Sokolowski
I do not recommend purchasing Sony Vegas. The actual software itself is designed well and has an easy-to-use and intuitive interface, but Sony's support is the worst in the industry. If you ever have a problem with Vegas, you will have to deal with people who have no compassion and adhere to draconian and nonsensical digital rights management policies.

When I reinstalled Windows, I lost my Vegas 8.0 registration key. I called technical support and gave them my address and customer information, and they said there would be no problem and that I was indeed listed in their database. However, the code they provided me came up with an "invalid activation code" error. They told me that the code was valid for Vegas 8.1, so I installed 8.1 and the error persisted.

Then, I got stuck with a CSR who repeatedly cut and pasted a script that was completely out of context with my questions. The script told me to provide the 8.0 registration code, which was the whole reason for the chat. Eventually, despite having all my information on file, including my registration code that now returned an error, they requested a receipt of my purchase. I provided them with the receipt, but then they told me that they would not honor it because the vendor was not on their list of sellers. It was not explained to me which sellers were on this list at the time of purchase, nor by Sony in its reply.

Therefore, I spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars and have a useless pile of manuals and shortcut key cards with nice pictures on the CD covers. A simple search reveals hundreds of pirated copies of Vegas, and these people are arguing with someone who has the decency to purchase a legitimate copy? Digital rights management means nothing to the pirates and hurts the paying customers.

By the way, forget about using the network rendering service. Even when I was able to use Vegas, I tried configuring it on the three computers allowed by the license and still could not get it to work because the license files needed to be configured differently. I haven't had these issues with competitors' products, and one software company was even nice enough to refuse my money when I had a similar registration code loss in the past (!).

As a result of this mess, I was not able to honor my grandfather at his funeral because I could not finish his memorial slideshow. I will never forgive Sony for that, and will avoid their products in every way possible in the future. You should too.



5 star Vegas Pro 8, February 24, 2009
By Nathan R. Freeman (USA)
The packaging, etc. was as if I ordered it straight from Sony. Loaded well and working perfectly.



Vegas Pro 8 is by far the best editor program for it price range., February 20, 2009
By Bruce S. Phung (Rochester NY)
I have a Canon HG10 camcorder and I love the HG10 but the editing program come with the camera is rubbish. I did a lot of research and decided to try some editing program out there but before I start buying any editing program I start by reading products (customer reviews) There are so many rubbish editing program out in the market as well. I find that Ulead Video Studio 11.5 seem to be decent program and cost only $27 to buy. So I decided to give that a try for a start. Guess what? Video Studio 11.5 don't recognize .M2ts file from HG10. So I am at the dead end. I am back to square one. Do more product review and I find the Sony Vegas Pro 8 is awsome program and it got many positive reviews. I download a free trial version to try and I immediately like it because Vegas Pro 8 is very powerful program and yes very complex to learn and will need to spent a lot of time to learn how use it. 3 days after using the free trial version Pro 8, I bought it afterward. The video tutorial is extremmely helpful because I am a newbie to editing video. 100% worth the money. Render 26 minutes video no crash no nothing, just work......

Update. After spent hundred of hours in learning it and editing video footages , I find that Vegas Pro8 are the best editing program and easy to use and learn. The interface are easy to understand as well. I also have Ulead Studio 11.5 which I did not like it at all. The interface are so so and simple. Rendering a video on Ulead studio 11.5 take a lot longer than Vegas Pro 8. Vegas Pro8 is my #1 editing program to use. I am using Window Vista 32 bit with 2gig ram Intel R Duo core CPU T5750 @ 2.00GHz Dell Laptop.

I have seen the trial version of Premiere Pro and Final Cut. These 2 editing softwares I could never learn, the interface are confused the hell out of me and is much more complex to learn.



Very good product, February 18, 2009
By D. John Zimmerman (San Jose)
This is a very good product and the delivery time was very fast. I used the Vegas Movie Maker for about a year before getting the 'pro' version. Both have a lot of editing power. As a result, there is a learning curve to use some of the advanced features.

I also recommend the purchase of the book "Vegas Pro 8 Editing Workshop" by Douglas Spotted Eagle. It will be very helpful for either product, even though some features are missing in the Movie Maker version.