Digital Video - January 2008 - (Page 21) desired length. those clips into your edit Unfortunately, I had timeline. DV online. to do this separately Like many aspects of for both video and Vegas, if you have no experiaudio, which almost defeats the ease ence with other NLEs, this one works of use in this case. just fine. But, coming from a backI found actually slicing up clips in ground in other systems, I found the timeline to be kind of a bummer. some of the interface decisions madYou can easily skim through your dening. Setting aside the fact that at material, but to actually use the Split first I barely skimmed the manual and command, you have to select the clip just dove in, most of the way Vegas itself, which meant my intended edit handles editing just isn’t very intuitive. point at the cursor would shift itself Take for instance, the basic disone way or another. The Trimmer solve between two cuts. Sony’s pretool is a better method, but it’s ferred method is to slide one clip into almost unnecessarily hidden as a another (they call it “Automatic Preferences option where you can Crossfades”) — which works, but it open clips there by double-clicking. can be cumbersome if you’re used to Vegas loves tracks, and when you selecting an edit point and adding a first open a blank project it gives you transition like I am. And while Sony plenty of them to work with. Aside offers a dizzying array of dissolve from the basic Video and Voice options (additive, subtractive, (audio) tracks, you’re given a Text between colors, you name it), I was track at the top, a Video Overlay almost pulling my hair out trying to track below it, and additional audio find what I would consider a “basic” tracks for Music and Sound Effects. dissolve between two clips. Turns out Adding text to a video was quick and that just deleting the effect itself cresimple (although the actual text input ates a traditional dissolve, which window was a bit small), and text seems counterintuitive to me (the disclips can be placed on any video solve should be “basic” to start with track, though they first appear on the and give you the option to fancy it up Text track. There’s a lot of power in or change it to something else). Once the Vegas tracks and timeline, but you have the dissolve in place, howonly one project can be open at a ever, it’s easy to click on it to change time, which means opening two its function or edit its settings, and instances of Vegas if you want to that’s where Vegas shines. copy and paste between projects. One edit function that I immediately liked was the setting to automatically ripple edits (it was off by EXPORTING default but there’s a button above Where Vegas might be lacking in the timeline to turn it on, or you can some editing finesse, it mostly shines select it in the Options menu or with when it comes time to finish your a quick Ctrl+L keystroke). It simplified project. Using the Make Movie feadoing some basic deletion of sections ture, I was able to quickly and easily that I didn’t want. Once those cuts print the finished product back to the are made, it’s easy to trim the clip HV20 in DV mode, complete with a edges, not to mention all the basic user-selectable amount of bars and stuff you’d expect such as slipping tone and black leader. Titles and tranand sliding within clips. Basic fades sitions must be rendered first, but this wound up being more straightforwas as snappy as it comes. ward than dissolves, since each clip Unfortunately, the biggest stumhas a little indicator in the corner bling block came when I tried to which you just drag out to the recapture my DV program as HDV to www.dv.com J.R. also reviews Sony’s DVD Architect Studio, which comes bundled with Vegas 8 Platinum Edition. Visit create an HD version. Simply put, it can’t be done. HDV is captured through a completely separate function of Vegas, and I couldn’t even find a way to recapture the HDV test clips I pulled in. You can, however, capture all of your media as HDV and then create DV clips for SD editing — just not the other way around. Truthfully, this limitation was surprising only because the program includes so many other pro-level features, but it wouldn’t stop me from recommending Vegas since most HDV users will just capture in that format to begin with and then export to whatever format they want. CONCLUSION After editing some of my wife’s travel video on my 50” home theatre HDTV and discovering it wasn’t the most natural of activities, I offloaded my captured media to a portable USB 2.0 hard drive and set it up on my Apple MacBook Pro with Windows XP loaded under Parallels Desktop. I’m happy to report this was a pretty flawless transition and everything ran quite well. Sadly, Parallels doesn’t yet support i.Link/Firewire, so it was back to my Vista machine for export to tape, but running Windows by way of Leopard 10.5’s Boot Camp (where Windows takes over the Mac hardware) doesn’t have this limitation. Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition, despite my few quibbles, delivers a lot of bang for the small bucks. It’s fast and efficient at importing and exporting, and once you get over the learning curve for its editing interface, you’ll be putting together projects in no time with plenty of money left over to save up for that hot new camera you’ve had your eye on. DV J.R. Bookwalter is an indie filmmaker whose credits include The Dead Next Door, Ozone and Witchouse 2 & 3. He owns Tempe Entertainment (tempevideo.com), a DVD and broadband distributor in Uniontown, Ohio. dv january 2008 21 http://www.dv.com http://tempevideo.com http://tempevideo.com http://www.dv.com
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