I am currently shooting one Sony A1U miniDV and using Premier Elements and I am considering the move to Vegas. I shoot mostly field, event some photojournalism and some interviews.

I am new in this arena and I am wondering Platinum Pro will meet all my needs. I sure could use the extra $550 for some more lights!

Thoughts...

Yes. (There's also a trial. And if you buy it and it doesn't, the upgrade may be cheaper than buying Vegas Pro in the first place).

I am currently shooting one Sony A1U miniDV and using Premier Elements and I am considering the move to Vegas. I shoot mostly field, event some photojournalism and some interviews.

I am new in this arena and I am wondering Platinum Pro will meet all my needs. I sure could use the extra $550 for some more lights!

Thoughts...

I have a Sony A1U myself and I use the Platinum Pro Pack for it. It does the job. For an A1 or any HDV or AVCHD camcorders, the Vegas Platinum is good enough. Of course, for the higher up models like the EX1R or any XDCAM EX/HD camcorders, I would recommend Vegas Pro., but, for the A1 you'll be fine with Vegas Platinum.

Ozzy

The only time that Platinum might not suffice is if you want full HD disk authoring capabilities. The included DVD Architect Studio 4.5 supports only standard-definition disk authoring. Otherwise, you'll either have to settle for menuless HD disks or purchase a third-party application for menu-based HD disk authoring.

And neither Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 nor DVD Architect Studio 4.5 has been updated in over a year. In fact, Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 is not based on Vegas Pro 9 - but rather the previous version, Vegas Pro 8.

I've noticed having used my mates platinum version, instead of my pro version, is you have no scopes, and if I remember right, only one video track, versus 32 or whatever Pro has, so a few limitations, but it essentially works in the same manner, mind you it was over a year ago I had a brief and frustrating play with it

Vegas movie studio is limited to 6 tracks, while the Pro version has unlimited tracks. With the limited tracks allowed, there always a workaround, (render the project and re-import it again into the timeline.) with the Pro version, you can have as many tracks as you want, thats what I love about the Pro version.


Bruce

Movie Studio is limited to 4 tracks of video and 4 tracks of audio.
Vegas Product Comparisons (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiohd/compare) for the rest of the differences.

Movie Studio Platinum 10 is now out:
10 video/audio tracks (enough?)
"Proper" monitor pane in the Trimmer as well as a load of other goodies (burning BluRay etc)
Coupled with an oh-so-stable functionality, Premiere is now out the window...

Hi Robin,

When you say the you can have proper monitoring pane do you mean scopes? And does that mean you can set your panels up side by side by side so you have one window with your media browser, one with your trimmer/scopes and the other with your output/preview?

This is how I've always set up my Vegas Pro screen, obviously with the timeline below. I've recently moved to Premiere but still use Vegas for some things. I want to update my Vegas from Pro 8 but, given It's no longer my primary editor, I might be able to live with Movie Studio Platinum. However I cannot live without scopes and hate not having the 3-panels + timeline setup like is the standard in Premiere, FCP etc. I'd be interested to what new features Platinum 10 has that might help it bridge the gap.

John,
I've got it set up like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v137/robind-r/Amrhywiaeth/vegasplatinum10.jpg

When you say "scopes" do you mean vectorscopes,RGB etc?

I'd be interested to what new features Platinum 10 has that might help it bridge the gap.

No scopes yet :-(
Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 Product Comparisons (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare)