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Sony Vegas Pro 11 review

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Verdict

Massive performance improvements are worth the upgrade alone; an outstanding update to a classy, powerful editor

Review Date: 10 Nov 2011

Reviewed By: Ben Pitt

Price when reviewed: £494 (£593 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Ease of Use
6 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

We’ve seen GPU acceleration bring dramatic benefits before, notably in Premiere Pro CS5, but it’s unusual to find it based on such broad hardware support, and for the acceleration to be available for such a large number of existing effects.

Vegas Pro 11 also bundles a new titles editor called NewBlue Titler Pro. It’s immediately impressive, with a fast, friendly interface and the ability to extrude and move text in 3D space. We like its ability to format and manipulate individual characters, but it’s disappointing that keyframe animation is only per text object and for a reduced set of parameters.

There are stylish animation templates ready to drop onto text objects, but control over them is fairly limited. Output quality is excellent, though, with support for textured fills and reflections. The latter gives a texture that moves as the object is animated.

We like NewBlue Titler Pro a lot, but it’s disappointing that Sony didn’t develop these itself and incorporate them into the existing ProType Titler. It means Vegas Pro users now have four titles editors to choose from, including the Titles & Text editor introduced in Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 11, all of which have their own strengths. We’d prefer one editor that does it all.

A new Sync Links feature provides a useful addition to the Group command and ripple editing options, creating a one-way link between two objects. For example, a titles object that’s linked to a video clip can be moved independently on the timeline, but when the video clip is moved, the titles object will follow it and stay synchronised. This is a similar concept to Apple Final Cut Pro X’s magnetic timeline, but Sync Links is much more controllable and predictable. The only downside is links must be made manually and individually.

Other new features include greater control over the Stabilize effect, allowing the user to specify stabilisation and pan smoothing amounts independently. There’s still no way to explicitly limit the crop amount, though. Effects, transitions and media generators are now arranged into subfolders, which makes them much easier to browse.

There’s added support for RAW image files and the Red Epic camera, integrated YouTube uploads and a revamped Render As dialog box taken from Vegas Movie Studio Platinum.

This is a tremendous update, with new creative tools, improved workflow and a massive boost to performance. For the first time, here’s a professional-quality editor that can handle 1080p video on a typical modern PC with no need for expensive, esoteric hardware or to compromise preview quality for smooth performance. Existing users shouldn’t hesitate to upgrade.

With an overhauled Pan/Crop editor, it might have knocked the mighty – and mightily expensive – Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium out of our A-List. The gap between Vegas Pro and Premiere Pro is smaller than ever, though, and Sony’s editor is the better choice for those who don’t produce complex animated graphics.

Author: Ben Pitt

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Comments

User comments

Advantage of being an amateur 3D animator

Sony Vegas Pro 11 looks phenomenal. Fortunately we amateurs can get away with the cheaper version.

Thanks to Sony Vegas Platinum I have recently been able to create and put "A new take on Little Miss Muffet" on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEp2fOTM0Ro for about a tenth of the cost!

By GeoffOakshott on 10 Nov 2011

Advantage of being an amateur 3D animator

I should have added that the cheaper Platinum version has also enabled Miss Muffet to be in full screen HD with background music and voice-over.

By GeoffOakshott on 10 Nov 2011

@GeoffOakshott

Thanks for the link, it is interesting to see what can be done with a reasonably priced package on a home PC.
However I am tempted to say "don't give up the day job" ;) But do keep working at an interesting hobby - Ardman started somewhere.

By milliganp on 10 Nov 2011

Any chance of a review of EDIUS 6

and EDIUS Neo?

By KieronSeth on 10 Nov 2011

As a long time user of Vegas Movie Studio, I was recently enveigled by one of Sony's "limited time offers" to upgrade to Pro V10 for a fraction of the above price. I'm now trying V11 with a view to spending the fairly reasonable (compared to Adobie anyway) upgrade price.

I have to say I am finding it fairly buggy. Hopefully Sony will patch it before to long (they have already issued one update since it was first released). I am using an AMD video card, which may or may not have to do with this.

I think the problem Sony have is that you have to really be quite an advanced Pro to notice any difference between the two versions to justify the vast price differential. Unlike Adobie, Sony do not make much effort to differentiate on looks or with "dumming down" hand-holding features on the "Am" version. Really unless you are making music videos and doing both audio and video yourself (Pro has very extensive audio capabilities rivaling specialist audio editors) you will be hard pressed to notice the difference!

By JohnAHind on 10 Nov 2011

Buggy and very Unstable

While the GPU Acceleration is supposed to bring in performance improvements, the new version is extremely unstable and buggy.
Check out the forums on Sony's website, CreativeCow etc.

Despite all the updated graphic drivers, and fresh installs, a lot of folks seem to be facing stability issues even with the latest 425 build.

While prior versions may have deserved 5 stars, this review is very misleading since it's specific to VP11. It should be 2.5 to max 3 stars at best in my opinion.

By AlSisley on 13 Nov 2011

Very Stable with right system

If anyone was more anoyed with memory error bugs and crushes I d be surprised,but I stayed with this system cos loved creative ease and freedom despite bugs.
Only lately I realised that this is amazing software and probably been misunderstood cos the system it require to run smoothly.

All I can say thank you SONY for such deal,as an struggling artist I know to appriciate power of this thing.

MY ADVICE IS RUN ANY SONY PLATFORM ON
I7(any) Win 7 64bit RAM 8GYG
RADEON 1G OR MORE(didnt test NVIDIAit is probably the samething)

I edit native 5d/7d files on 4-6 tracks something that FCP can dream about,with not a single crash.\ for AVC 1080P/25P 16Kcompression.
People who get crashes do not have enough memory on their system.
Misconception is that is CPU based,but Memory is cruicial for the rendering process...
I read this on some forum took advice and now I try to help others who had same problems in past(this happens to FCP and especially to CS5)

2GIG of RAM per CORE of your PC ideally QUAD CORE I7
so you need at least 8G.
if dual core then 4G,if single core then 2G,it wont crash,it will be slower
though.

Hope this will help you out guys.

It is awesome software and I am no salesman,just a struggling artist...

Cheers

By CreativeFilm on 21 Nov 2011

Render Speed compared,first impressions!!!

Just stummbled across this one.

That is why is 5 stars,
it also highlits importance of Graphic cards and system.

Just relieved that years of my experience with Vegas isnt going to be vaste,cos I ll have to learn "industry standards"
Premiere and FCP,especilly when 3D work,music video and voice over need best audio support where Sony
is above the rest,wow,first one to give us 3D Stereoscopic rendering,RED,XDCAM,4K,
EPIC,NXCAM,MVC,AVC....

Well done guys,you ve done some real good work in past year,it wont go unnotice with us less "industry standar applicators"
Thumbs up!

By CreativeFilm on 22 Nov 2011