Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Production Suite 11 (PC)

Beware ! Magix now own Sony Vegas, and have hacked the DVD Architect part, meaning you cannot burn a DVD using this program or any other Vegas programs, which are now all discontinued and obsolete . It is still a very good editing suite but no longer supported . Hence the three stars

Found it difficult to use at first but after a week of youtube tutorials I have it sorted.I am now satisfied that it is a suitable replacement for the late lamented Movieplus X6.Only 4 stars because of its complexity, but that is largely due to my advancing years and poor eyesight.All in all, well done Sony.

Like all good software packages this needs a bit of time and patience to learn to use well. Coming from Pinnacle of years ago to this, there can be no comparison at all. Pinnacle was slow and frequently crashing or freezing, not so with Vegas.From loading onto your computer to registration to use, couldn't be easier. The program doesn't stop with leaving you to just get on with it, no, it has a wonderful helpful tool called "Show me how" which will take through almost everything you would want to use. This brilliant idea has already saved me a lot of frustration - an example was I wanted to know how I could separate the sound from the video and looked and looked through the menus, so I thought give the "Show me how" idea a go and hey presto, there it was; simplicity itself, just press "s" and it splits the two. Brilliant and simple.As there are many different types of video files these days (why do they that???) you may find it may take a little time to set the video input to the correct file type, yet even this can be simplified by just following the "Show me how" button. Don't let the idea of all these different video files put you off, this software is amazing and well worth all the effort of the learning curve.Remember this is a "Suite" meaning it also contains other software, one for DVD menus, which is exceptionally good and quite easy to use once you have the basics (remember "Show me how") and more importantly "Sound Forge 10" which is a brilliant piece of software in itself - I have been using Sound Forge 9 for ages and now with the next progression of version 10, it is even better.Back to Vegas Pro the video editing suite, the transitions from one scene to another are fantastic, all of them being editable too, it even has a chroma tool (blue or green screen work as in the movies). In fact all the epcial effects and editing tools are really good, dare I say professional. Only a handful of years ago a software package like this would have cost many hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, and here are Amazon offering the whole suite for an incredible price - which incidentally is less than half the price Sony would have you pay on their website.Finally - with the installation disc comes a DVD giving lessons on how to get up and running with Vegas Pro, which in my mind is vital to get your juices going, showing you what you can really do. Also a tip, if you are not sure about spending your hard earned money on this software package, then you can download a fully usable trial direct from Sony - this is what I did, downloaded one day, used and enjoyed it for the next few days and then felt I really needed it, so bought it direct from Amazon. If you do use this route, when you get your software, you need to remove the download before you install it.All in all, amazing software at an amazing price that will blow you away. 5 stars just isn't enough.

This is potentially a very powerful and sophisticated piece of software BUT sadly it is also difficult to learn and use straight from the box.I bought it in preference to other packages because:a) Some reviews of other market leaders suggested that they are very prone to crashing - whereas SONY's software seemed to be free of this andb) I have a SONY DCR-HC30E camcorder (a mini DVD recorder bought in 2004) and naively thought that the two SONY products might work better together.Point b) proved to be completely wrong. The software persistently failed to "see" the camcorder when I connected it to my PC with a firewire cable (USB isn't supported in WINDOWS 7) so I ended up having to import the videos using WINDOWS Movie Maker, which recognised the camcorder and imported the videos immediately.This was NOT a good beginning!First impressions have not been much better.Cutting and pasting video clips seems fiddly and complicated.Likewise adding titles.And incorporating digital still photos (wrong size and shape for a start).So my first project was completed using WINDOWS Movie Maker for the sake of time.Some of the above criticisms (although not the difficulty importing video from the camcorder) may be due to my lack of experience with the product and there is a tutorial disk, but I found it of limited value and it was based on newer cameras than mine (e.g. 3D video editing is covered but using mini DVD tapes is not).That is why the jury is still out. I will either increase my rating, if I become more familiar with the package and get to apprecoate it, or reduce it if I have to stay with WINDOWS Movie Maker and find that I have wasted my money buying this product.***************************************************************Well I decided to give this another go - to produce an edited 1 hour video of a College Study Tour.This time the program began by downloading a long list of updates from the net, after which it was able to import video on DVD tape from my camcorder, so at least that is fixed, but otherwise it was the same old story and I ended up reverting to Movie Maker.So once again, like so many of your other reviewers, I found myself defeated and frustrated by this product's lack of "user friendliness" (and by the way, I am quite computer literate so how would a novice cope?)The rating remains the same at 3* to reflect the software's potential - if I can ever get it to work!