The video-editing software, Vegas, comes in 2 main categories: Movie Studio… and Pro. One
doesn’t cost much, and the other is really expensive. But what’s the difference?...
…it’s kind of embarrassing for me to admit that I didn’t know until now. It’s one thing to read
off the feature list, but it’s another to have actual experience with the software.
This year, I spent a large part of my budget on Winrar, so didn’t have enough money to renew my
subscription of Vegas. Being unable to get a significant discount this time around,
I was like… you know what, why not try using the home version instead? HOW BAD COULD IT BE?!
Besides, it’s the youtuber, and not his tools which defines the quality of his work!
Long story short: you get most of the same things. Unless I mention it in this video, my experience
with them has been the same. And the things that are missing aren’t essential, but could save you
time, and I feel have been omitted from the home version to make your life more difficult. And it
has worked! My life is now a bit less pleasant than it was before. But at least I have Winrar.
Bear in mind that while I’ve moved to the budget Movie Studio line, from that I’m using the middle
Platinum version. There’s an even more basic version of Vegas that doesn’t support stuff I
really need, like video stabilization and 4K. It doesn’t even have colour correct…
which I do use, but mostly just to make my video’s thumbnails gaudy colours.
Yes, that’s right, I use Vegas to edit pictures with. Fight me.
But yeah, I wouldn’t sink as low as the basic Movie Studio edition for what I do
because it would be too limiting, and the quality of my content WOULD drop. So when
you’re watching this video, just note that I’m comparing Movie Studio Platinum with Vegas Pro.
All versions of Pro seem to be the same. With more expensive versions you get extra
programs that I’ve never needed. But just so you know, I moved from the Vegas 365 version.
The other versions of Vegas last you forever, but won’t feature next year’s new features.
So what’s the difference between Movie Studio Platinum and Pro?
The biggest, most horrendous, most UNFORGIVABLE omission in Movie Studio, is the resampling.
By default, Vegas will blur all your frames together if they don’t exactly match the
framerate set in the program. Resampling makes videos look absolutely horrible
and is a tell-tail sign that it was made using Vegas, and that its maker hasn’t yet discovered
how to disable resampling. Don’t get me wrong- it serves a purpose. But should be left off
unless you need it for that one specific, niche reason, which is to give high-speed
footage a nice motion-blur effect. In pro, you can just go up to video
properties, and disable Resample by default. And you’ll never have to worry about it again!
But in the Movie Studio version? No such option exists! Instead, you need to remember,
just before you render your video, to select every single video clip and to disable it manually!
What a pain! And yes, it’s caught me out a few times. But luckily I, as a skilled video maker,
have spotted it before release every time. So far. The real criminal detail here is that the Home
edition used to have the option, before it was removed some time between version 11 and 14.
And Magix know just how much people want to disable this option, since they proudly claim
being able to disable it on a ‘project-wide’ setting is a ‘feature’ on all of their pro
products. It’s as though they’re forcing this unwanted feature on by default to frustrate
users into upgrading. And if you’re not then please, Magix, disable it in the next update.
The next difference that has affected me is the batch processing. This means you can render more
than one video in one click. This is useful if you’re wanting to extract several still
images from a video timeline. Just select them all like so, Tools, scripting, batch render,
and you can output it as however many different video or image files as you like.
But with Home Platinum you’ll need to select one, render, then select the next, render,
and so on. It wastes a LOT of time, especially when making comparison shots. This isn’t an option
you’ll need until you do, so many content creators probably won’t ever notice. But it’s a nice
shortcut to have for when you need it- and you won’t know when you’ll need it until you do. Like
that time I split a 5 hour Assassins Creed Origins soundtrack video into almost 200 different files.
And I miss XAVC. It was my preferred render option of choice, which for some reason Movie Studio
doesn’t have. I instead use AVC and it takes longer. When testing it, it took about 40% longer,
but I definitely feel that difference when making a longer video. And this is just at
stock settings, which aren’t quite good enough for my liking. But the higher you set the bitrate,
the slower it becomes. A recent 7 minute video I made took almost 2 hours to encode, compared with
about 15 minutes in Pro. Not acceptable at all, especially given how often I find myself in a rush
to get a video out in time. I’m sure I’ll find some combination of settings that I’m happy with
but right now… it’s not as good. And GPU encoding isn’t an alternative as it’s as bugged as ever.
When you place something into a vegas timeline, it adds it to the ‘project media’, for easy
reference. From then on, every time you load the project it has to load through everything in that,
so for a large project you’ve been working on for a while it can end up taking quite some time.
This becomes annoying when you’re only using a third of the stuff you initially placed in the
timeline, which is quite standard for me over the course of a project. In Vegas pro there’s
a handy button that removes unused media. What an obvious and useful feature! …But
it’s not there in Media Studio. The solution is to copy+paste the entire project to a new timeline.
What an inelegant solution. It’s like you’re still living in the stone age or something.
Also, Movie Studio tries to help by loading up with pre-made video and audio tracks, which only
serve to confuse things if you know what you’re doing. It’s a simple case of selecting them and
deleting. But again, one more thing you have to do every time and I can’t find a way of disabling it.
And it looks like the velocity option’s missing, but I didn’t notice that until now so I don’t
think it really helped me much. Velocity let you fast-forward video playback by up to 1000%,
while without it you’re stuck stretching or skewing things only up to 400% in one go. So
I guess having the velocity feature would save you time if you’re making super-condensed timelapses.
But I never trusted it as much as the conventional method any way, so no great loss to me there.
And the last exclusion is the mask feature. This lets you blank out bits of a screen. It’s simple,
it works… and the alternatives are a lot more time-consuming. I loved using the mask tool when
I was showing a clip from youtube and wanted to hide the videos and adverts down the side.
Look! Done in just a few seconds. Without that I’d have to mess with the cookie cutter tool.
And that feels nowhere near as robust.
One unexpected downside that I can’t really blame Magix for is that Movie Studio is more
incompatible with most of the tutorials out there for Vegas. It’s no secret that the Pro software is
widely pirated and so most Youtube tutorials are done for that particular version, and this can
sometimes lead to problems when following them in Movie Studio versions. Like how you have to enable
or disable various advanced internal options to prevent the software from crashing every 2
minutes. I still managed to do it eventually, but it was just a bit more difficult than with pro.
So any way, those are the things that I’ve noticed in the month or so that I’ve been using Movie
Studio Platinum for. You can definitely SURVIVE on it, but it is a shame to miss out on some of
the quick and easy time-saving tools that Pro ships with. The forced resampling is a sin. An
unforgivable sin. But the rest I understand as being stuff that a basic video-editing program
doesn’t require. I never really thought of how a Video editor was supposed to tier their products.
I wonder if there’s a more elegant solution. If I’m honest, I don’t see myself as an
‘expert’ at Vegas. I’m an expert at what I need it for. I can make what I want with it.
It hasn’t stopped me from making Odgrub, or skin showcases, or some crazy 8K upscaled masterpiece.
To make these things, I’ve used some of Vegas’s features extensively, but there are other features
I haven’t even touched in the 10 or so years that I’ve used the program. It’s always strange to see
somebody else using the program for the first time and already using stuff that I’ve never bothered
with. I ask myself ‘would it benefit me?’ but then I see that I achieve the same thing in a different
way. So it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel the need to learn every single feature in the program just
for the sake of it. So it could be that there are more elegant work-arounds to these missing
features that I simply haven’t discovered, or haven’t thought to look for. But jumping
from Pro to Movie Studio definitely required me to change some of the ways that *I* used the program.
I know already people in the comments section will be spamming it with stuff like ‘Wow! Vegas is a
pile of rubbish, use black magic or PREMIERE PRO instead!’ Like those programs don’t have their own
problems or issues! Hmm. I’m wary of listening to people like that, who may not have used
Vegas themselves, or whose recommended products might not even be better for me than Vegas is.
Besides, after having used Vegas for so many years, I know how to use it. It would take me
months, if not years, to get as proficient with another program. Yes, sunken cost fallacy and all
that. But it’s an important thing to factor for me here! I rely on Vegas for my living,
I don’t really want to make the leap unless I don’t have any other choice. I would say
if it aint broke, don’t fix it, but Vegas is somewhat broken. It’s just that I’m good
enough with it to know how to fix it. It’s maybe not something people can appreciate
unless they’ve been using certain software for as long as I have. And a lot of the issues I
face I have only encountered BECAUSE I’ve got good enough at what I do, and on this software.
In short, based on my experience, I can only tell you which Vegas product would be best for
your means. Movie Studio Platinum allows me to make my kind of content, but Pro lets me make it
with a bit less effort, and a few more features. We’re not talking star fades or cyclical rainbow
colours here- Movie Studio Platinum has that kind of stuff already. Pro contains basic,
powerful, helpful features that help you in very specific, occasional situations.
If you’re looking to edit videos, chances are you’ll go straight for the most expensive option,
or Premiere Pro or whatever, like that’s some how going to make your videos the best out there. But
if you’re going down the legal route, you can save yourself a fortune by opting for
Movie Studio instead of Pro. Hell, you can buy that and still have money left over for Winrar.