Manufacturer	Sonic Foundry
Website	Sonic Foundry Vegas Video 3.0
Platform	Windows
Price	?
Rating	Average: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (2 votes)

Vegas Video 3.0 is made by Sonic Foundry, the makers of the Acid line of loop based arrangement. Much like Acid, Vegas Video retains the same modular interface style. Panels can be tucked away at the bottom of the main window, or they can be pulled out into their own windows (great for multi-display setups).
Vegas does not need to render in order to display FX and layers. The more FX and layers you add, the slower the output. This still gives you a decent idea of how the finished piece will look. It would be nice if Sonic Foundry got 3rd party hardware support for realtime rendering (like the Matrox 2500 for Final Cut or Premiere)

Vegas comes with 37 DirectX video FX plugins. Some of the useful ones are: Chroma Key, Lens flare, Mask Generator, Light Rays, Color Curves, Levels, and others. All the FX are keyframeable. You can Select multiple FX keyframes and move/cut/copy/paste them only in the FX parameters window. Vegas does show keyframes for the FX in the main timeline, but you cannot perform editing operations on multiple FX keyframes (this would have been a useful feature, may in the next version...)

Vegas has a large variety of audio FX. The audio FX adhere to the DirectX standard, so any directX plugins work with this. FX can be applied to individual tracks, to the master out, or any of the 24 insertable busses. The One issue with the audio FX is that they do not automate, which basically means that you can't assign parameters at one keyframe then change them at a different keyframe (Video FX do automate however)

Vegas uses a single preview window instead of two. I find a single window to be adequate, though most old school videographers feel more comfortable with 3 point editing much like Final Cut and Premiere.

Vegas provides its own DV codec for rendering high quality final masters. The final product looks really good. And an added bonus about this codec is that Quicktime will open AVIs that were rendered with it. Vegas also provides a nice MPEG-2 codec as well.

All in all I think Vegas is a great editor. I think future revisions are needed before it has everything I am looking for, but I still use it for many things.

Pros:
- Easy to use interface
- Great audio editing features
- Nice FX for both audio and video
- good quality rendering
- Dynamic RAM preview
- No rendering required to view FX

Cons:
- No image sequence export
- No direct stream copy (ala VirtualDub)
- No Audio FX automation
- Cannot perform editing operations on
multiple keyframes in timeline view