VEGAS Pro is an advanced non-linear editor from Sony that features user-friendly functionality combined with powerful professional tools.
Create rough cuts quickly using inbuilt Storyboards. Arrange video clips like photographs and rearrange as needed.
An intuitive color grading panel lets you seamlessly access technical and creative LUTs, and new upscaling filters provide enhanced upscaling options.
Scripting
VEGAS Pro is a professional video editing suite packed with all of the tools and features necessary for producing top-quality videos. While its learning curve may initially prove challenging, once familiarity sets in it becomes straightforward. Since VEGAS Pro doesn’t come cheap though, this option should only be considered by those wanting top-quality videos for business or hobbyists who already possess programs such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro.
Scripting is an advanced feature of the program that enables you to automate repetitive tasks. This feature can help with tasks such as creating templates, saving render formats and executing complex commands with one click. Furthermore, using its scripting language you can further personalize workflow and add custom commands directly to the toolbar for quick access.
The software offers an impressive variety of rendering formats and resolutions to meet all devices and resolutions, while supporting HDR (high dynamic range) content, a color correction feature which increases contrast and saturation. Furthermore, there’s a compositing system integrated within it so you can easily blend foregrounds and backgrounds using various effects.
Compositing features within this software are powerful, enabling you to create animated titles or masks as well as enhance blur, place text between objects, place subtitles between objects and perform other layer-based edits. Furthermore, Z-Depth OFX plug-in is available which identifies foregrounds and backgrounds so each can be treated as its own layer.
Nesting
Modern video editing projects can be complex. VEGAS Pro’s Nested Timeline feature provides editors with an efficient solution for managing these projects with its ability to split out sections and work on them independently – keeping the master program updated as changes occur and keeping lean, efficient and organized workflow.
To create a nested timeline, select an event on your current timeline and click the Nested Timeline button in the timeline toolbar. A separate window opens where your nested timeline opens for editing; once this event has been opened up you can modify as with any other event by adding effects and transitions if desired; changes made here will automatically reflect in its parent timeline.
VEGAS Pro offers another unique option when saving nested timelines: by creating an entirely separate project file when saving, rather than simply embedding them in existing projects, VEGAS Pro opens up collaboration possibilities not available with NLEs that only embed timelines.
VEGAS Pro offers advanced tools for compositing and visual effects, such as the Z-Depth OFX plugin which detects foregrounds and backgrounds to automatically separate objects in images, and Smart Masking which detects and tracks moving objects. Furthermore, sophisticated color correction with 40 LUTs and expanded individual R, G, and B curves.
Keyframe Animation
Keyframes in an animation timeline allow you to define how things should look at some point in the future. Multiple keyframes may be set along the way for complex animations with parameters like size, position, color, rotation opacity etc.
Clicking a keyframe brings the animation timeline cursor directly to that frame in the video preview window, or allows you to directly select one from there.
To create a keyframe, just click anywhere along the animation timeline – no exact spot needed – then double click at your desired point for another click and a keyframe will appear there.
Adjust the initial keyframe so that it matches your vision at the start of your animation, for instance zooming in and out on someone’s face as desired.
As you create keyframes, they will appear in a separate row at the bottom of your animation timeline. You can expand or collapse this track keyframe row to view keyframes for individual tracks; similarly if a track containing keyframes moves its timeline slider, its keyframes will follow it; alternatively you could use Envelope tool to create time selection that includes all its keyframes simultaneously and move them all at once.
Motion Tracking
VEGAS Pro now boasts an upgraded motion tracking software, supporting more cameras and enabling users to easily isolate moving objects in video scenes and isolate their position for tracking by editors and VFX artists who wish to apply text, color grading or effects that follow them as they move throughout a scene.
VEGAS Pro’s ability to track corner positions in video footage is another notable aspect. This feature can be utilized for various effects, including picture-in-picture and quad warp. Pixelation effects as well as offset/wrap may also be implemented using this technique.
VEGAS Pro may not be as widely utilized as Adobe Premiere, but it offers some unique features not found elsewhere. Plus, its active community has produced thousands of video tutorials, visual effects, and templates tailored specifically for this program.
VEGAS Pro’s latest version boasts major enhancements to its core editing functionality as well as advanced enhancements, such as AI assisted masking and tracking through integration with Boris FX’s Mocha Pro planar tracking tool. Furthermore, this software excels when it comes to HDR capabilities as well as offering sophisticated color grading tools. Furthermore, SOUND FORGE Pro integration now enables users to edit audio in the software before returning it automatically into VEGAS Pro for timeline updating purposes.
HDR
HDR (High Dynamic Range) provides an advanced image quality experience that goes beyond pixels and resolution alone. Instead, HDR focuses on brightness and color to produce more realistic imagery that draws viewers in for a fully immersive viewing experience.
High-dynamic-range imaging enables a new level of visual detail, color and contrast that brings images and video to life on today’s most advanced monitors and televisions. VEGAS Pro streamlines your HDR camera-capture-image processing workflow with one-stop import, processing, enhancement, previewing and export of HDR data import, processing enhancement previewing exporting.
VEGAS Pro offers support for various HDR formats and gamuts, such as HDR10 and HLG recording formats used by many professional cameras. Furthermore, its built-in Waveform and Vectorscope monitor provides real-time analysis of your media in high resolution with true-to-life colors.
Vegas Pro now makes it possible to edit and view HDR footage in real-time thanks to a brand-new feature that lets you render, then immediately play back an entire sequence of clips using the File>Properties>Video>HDR Mode drop-down list. Choose HDR10 and you will notice several properties change accordingly – for instance, Pixel Format changes from 8-bit float to 32-bit float and ACES color space is activated. This same process can also be found when switching between HDR8 and HLG modes in VEGAS Pro. In addition to these enhancements, GPU-accelerated AVC encoder support for certain limited formats is now also included with enhanced text tools as well as NewBlue Titler Pro 2D/3D titling support.
Audio
VEGAS Pro is an advanced video editing tool with sophisticated features designed to give your productions a professional edge. It offers an array of video and audio tools such as compositing, green screen effects, keyframe animation and multi-track audio recording – as well as offering various EQ and compression effects – alongside support for 24p DV as well as high-resolution audio formats, plus business tools like media hub, simplified color grading and shaky movement stabilization for business use.
Vegas makes adding music and voice over to videos simple with the audio track and mixer, providing clear display and volume adjustment of each track allowing a seamless blending between a song with video for a professional result.
Vegas software boasts some innovative audio tools, like timestretching. This can be helpful in many scenarios – synchronizing songs to the tempo of video to altering track length without altering pitch – all done in real time on-the-fly and realtime. Just be careful not to overstretch as too much timestretching could render your track sound robotic or unnatural.
VEGAS Pro offers an expansive collection of both free and premium audio plugins, such as modulation effects, guitar amp simulators, single and dual channel equalizers, as well as an innovative spectral analyzer/sonogram/spectrogram feature – plus there’s even an easy loudness maximizer available!
