CreativeCOW's Jim Harvey takes a look at Vegas Pro 9

CreativeCow by Jim Harvey

One of the things that I like about the Sony Vegas series is that they don’t rush out and release new versions willy nilly. A version will come out and as people use it and feedback is received, updates will be issued to enhance or correct things in that particular release. All the while, the engineers and coders are working on the next version based on industry events and user input. The evolution of feature sets in Sony Vegas has been extremely timely and cohesive.

The new release, VEGAS PRO 9 offers a host of new features starting out with the most obvious, the user interface. The interface opens with a darker palette (the previous version was a lighter color which many people changed manually to lessen eyestrain and be more neutral in a darkened edit suite). While I personally didn’t find the older colors to be bothersome, I must admit to liking the new look. On my 24” monitor, this color scheme seems to work nicely.

There are also a couple of new layout options that have been added to customize the setup depending on the task at hand. Audio Mixing and Color Correction are specifically targeted at those tasks. Additionally, as always, you can further customize your layout to reflect your workflow preferences and save that scheme. read more...