http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope
I recently finished my last video using the new Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 10 HD Production suite (Build 179)(could the name be any longer!) I was using Plat 9 and decided to upgrade and I must say I'm glad I did!
I'll Try to keep it short and just talk about the improvements important to me! First about my new system (due to a Bios upgrade FAIL! on my old system
) It's an AMD Phenom II 6 core 3.2 gig , 16 gigs DDR3 1600 and a WD VelociRaprot HD plus an WD external 1TB my book. I'm currently running Vista (64bit), I haven't upgraded to Vista 1.2, Umm I mean Windows 7. It run butter smooth but who knows how it will run on lesser systems. All I can say is it's a lot faster then Plat 9 when it comes to playback and editing. Render times seem about the same.Ok the big improvements I noticed.
* No 2 gig file limit (plat 9 had this annoying bug you had to split apart any MP4 files larger then 2 gigs).
* No need to modify the program files (remove 2 gig memory cap using CFF Explorer) to make the damn thing work like I did with Plat 9! http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=650217
* Darker UI, this is actually a big improvement for me, I hated the white background of Plat 9.
*** Better performance, this one is huge! I still have plat 9 installed so I was able to do back to back tests. Even on my NEW 6 core rig Plat 9 still gave horrible FPS. I'm talking 2 - 7 FPS even in Draft mode! With the new Plat 10HD I get 60! The difference is truly amazing. The files that gave Plat 9 the most problems for me were large MP4 files from my GoPro HD. With plat 10HD it plays everything smooth with only an occasional stutter when changing clips, but it's very minor. No more proxy editing for me anymore!
Yes it support multi core!
95% on all 6 cores! almost brings a tear to the eye
* Another feature that I have not seen documented is during playback it will automatically drop the quality in the preview window to get acceptable frame rates. So now I can keep it on "Best Full" and as soon as I hit play it automatically drops to a lower quality as needed. I have seen it drop to "preview full" Sometimes it even drops to "preview half" but that's the lowest I have seen it go thus far, and it's still very acceptable looking. As soon as I stop it goes right back to "Best Full" for color correcting and adding effect. It's really seamless and if I hadn't noticed the text change I probably still wouldn't realize it was doing it. And let me say it again, 60 FPS with color correction and titles. The same scene with plat 9 would be chugging along at 3-5 FPS in draft quality looking like a slide show.
* Other new features are the Secondary color corrector. It looks like it might be pretty powerful with it's masking ability. I didn't play with it too much but it warrants more investigation.
* The De-shaker! This was another feature I really wanted to try! But I must say sadly it can't perform miracles. But depending on the clip the results vary from pretty amazing to total crap. It's a fairly dumbed down tool, you have 6 setting to choose from and that's it. It's difficult to tell exactly how the settings differ from each other. Would of been nice if there were parameters to choose from, like how much cropping, panning speed, ETC, that will probably be saved for the Pro version I'm guessing. You do lose some sharpness from the zooming but if you add a little sharpening afterwords by the time you watch it on youtube you cant tell the difference. So overall I believe It's going to be a very useful tool. One negative thing about this tool is it crashed my system twice when I tired to "undo".
Speaking of crashing Plat 10HD seems pretty stable. It crashed a total of 3 times while I was working with it over probably a total of 30-40 hours. Twice playing with the de-shaker and once when I hit save. Luckily the auto recovery system works well and I never lost more then one minute of time.
* Track envelops! I actually forgot to even use this and just tried it two seconds ago, works great! Now you can now easily adjust volume and panning at anytime. The website says Plat 10HD also supports multi channel 5.1 AC-3 surround sound, I didn't try it and have no idea how to use it.
I bought the Production Suite version which comes with Sound Forge, Vocal Eraser, DVD Architect. I only tried Sound Forge for a bit trying to cut up a song and actually found it easier to do in Plat 10HD. That's probably because I haven't used Sound Forge for years. But I'm sure some of the EQ and other effect in Sound Forge will come in handy. I just tried the Vocal Eraser for fun. Probably the last time I'll ever use it. I tired it on a Van-Hagar song, Ain't talkin'bout love (live version). After about 1 minute of tweaking I was able to remove most (75% to 85%) of Sammy's voice. So yea it works and I suppose it could be useful (It sounds like a hard song to remove all the vocals from).
Here is a action screen shot rendering my video.
Huge image linkhttp://img693.imageshack.us/img693/3106/99percentyea.jpg
Umm what else? Oh yea. I noticed there are more options for rendering videos in AVC (H.264) now. Instead of just the "Sony AVC" you now have the "MainConcept AVC/AAC(MP4)". And I think I have found my new favorite render settings!
MainConcept
Custom Frame size
1280x720 (or whatever you need)
Profile: Main
Frame rate: 29.970 (or whatever you need)
NOTE: I was able to create render error by typing in "30" for the frame rate under the Sony AVC so use the drop down 29.970. Strangely the MainConcept will allow "30" typed into the frame rate.
Field: progressive
Pixel aspect: 1
Reference frames 2
Use deblocking filter "checked"
Variable bit rate, two pass "checked"
Max BPS 14,000,000
Min BPS 5,000,000
I tried a bunch of render settings and this setting gave me just as good images as any with a reasonably small files sizes. About 150 megs for a 3-4 minute movie. So this is my new setting I'm going to roll with for awhile.
I tired the following files:
MP4 (H.264) files from my GoPro HD: No problems
AVCHD (*.MTS) from my GH1: No problems
And Mov (H.264) file showing some RED camera footage: No problems
Well that's all I can think of for now. if you have any specific questions let me know. For around 100 bucks this program offers tremendous value IMHO.
