Vegas 5 review

Each video-editing enthusiast has his or her own idea about which is the best editing suite.

Ours is that nothing beats Vegas, previously from Sonic Foundry and now published by Sony. Its editing tools make light work of often complex tasks, allowing you to edit far more quickly than in other applications. Vegas 4 added a swathe of features that made it a worthy contender to stalwarts such as Premiere and Avid. Vegas 5 builds on this to deliver an incredibly powerful editing program.

Some updates are relatively simple. Video and audio objects can be played in reverse. You can save and recall layouts of the highly customisable screen layout. Subclips allow you to define sections of video files to appear in the Media Pool - ideal for organising footage before you begin editing.

Envelope automation allows value changes to be programmed via curves and points drawn on to the timeline, and these can now be recorded directly from fader movements or from a range of hardware controllers. New envelopes allow complex automation of Transition Progress (the rate at which one clip blends to another) and Velocity (the playback speed). The latter is great for extraordinary time-bending effects, going from 300 per cent to -100 per cent, but sadly, synchronisation with the audio is lost when using this tool, and there isn't a similar one for audio tracks.

Vegas now supports bezier masks for creating complex cutout masks. These can be animated using keyframes, and anti-aliasing and feathering is available to smooth and blur their edges. Another big new feature is 3D track motion for animating video objects in three dimensions. Together, these tools allow for some complex compositing techniques, but both could do with some refinement. Bezier curves are awkward to define, with no way to create simple shapes such as a circle automatically and no simple way to resize curves, while 3D track motion is as tricky to control as any 3D modelling program.

DVD authoring comes courtesy of a separate application, DVD Architect 2, which is available only when bought with Vegas 5 in the Vegas +DVD bundle at £548 inc VAT. This updated version is a massive improvement on the original, with a wealth of extra controls over advanced DVD authoring parameters, while still retaining sensible defaults to make the process easy for beginners. You can now customise button highlight styles, set end actions for chapters and menus, include alternative soundtracks for multiple languages or surround formats, and many other advanced functions. Only the lack of CSS and Macrovision encryption mark out Adobe's Encore DVD as the superior product.

Vegas 5's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, and with DVD Architect 2 included, our admiration for this package is stronger than ever. The cut-down Screenblast Movie Studio provides the same core tools for just £92, but for those who can afford it, Vegas is unbeatable.