Vegas is a longstanding name in the video editing software space, originally developed by Sony but now overseen by Magix. Until now, Vegas Pro had been held back by overwhelming interface complexity, so only serious pros needed apply. In recent versions, the developers behind Vegas have started to overhaul the application to deliver a more user-friendly, high-level video editor. The latest Vegas Pro begins to see some fruits from those efforts, but it’s still one of the more complex options—enough so that amateur hobbyists may find it challenging. As such, Corel VideoStudio and CyberLink PowerDirector, remain our Editors' Choice winners for enthusiast-level video editing software.
How Much Does Vegas Pro Cost?
Magix has been working to improve the user interface so it's more appealing to serious amateurs and to make the pricing more palatable for that audience. Formerly you were looking at $599 to get the software, but now you can subscribe for $12.99 per month for an Edit level subscription or buy it outright for $249. Note that these prices are often discounted. At the time of writing, subscriptions start at $7.99 a month, and the perpetual license is $199. The subscription option lets you download 20 clips from a library of 1.5 million royalty-free stock video and audio assets and gets you 20GB online storage for uploading mobile media, and all interim updates. Magix reps tell me the product is in active development, with monthly new updates.
The higher tiers aimed at professionals, Vegas Pro and Vegas Post, add ancillary software along with more online storage and stock footage access. The Pro level ($19.99 per month with annual commitment; $399 perpetual license) includes Vegas Stream for live broadcasting, Sound Forge Audio Studio, and Boris Primatte Studio chroma keying. The subscription option at that level ups the online storage to 50GB, removes the download limit for HD stock footage, and adds a text-to-speech tool for voiceovers.
The top-end Vegas Post level ($29.99 per month with annual commitment; $599 perpetual) includes all the tools a pro production outfit needs. In addition to everything in Vegas Pro, you get Vegas Effects (similar to Adobe After Effects) and Vegas Image (for photo workflow and editing). Subscriptions at that level can download unlimited 4K stock footage and get 100GB of online storage. All levels are available in a free 30-day trial version.
Similar Products
Adobe Premiere Pro
DaVinci Resolve
Apple Final Cut Pro
CyberLink PowerDirector 365
For comparison, Premiere Pro has no perpetual license option. You need to pay $20.99 per month with a year’s commitment, $239.88 for a full year, or $31.49 month-to-month. That gets you 100GB of cloud storage. CyberLink PowerDirector Ultimate costs $139.99 outright or you can subscribe for $69.99 for a year or $19.99 month-to-month. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate costs $129.95 for a perpetual license ($89.95 for upgraders), with no subscription options. DaVinci Resolve can be had as a capable free application; the Studio version, with more tools and effects, retails for $295.
Vegas Pro System Requirements
The Vegas Pro software runs on Windows 10 or Windows 11. There's no macOS version. Its 630MB download is economical compared with other video software, as is the disk footprint of 2GB. Premiere Pro takes up 8GB on my SSD, and Pinnacle Studio 3.6GB.
Vegas Pro Interface and Getting Started
Vegas uses the traditional three-panel layout, with source at the top left, preview at top right, and timeline along the entire bottom length of the screen. You can now have dual preview windows for source clip and project, and you can switch the video preview window between a Trimmer mode for source clips and the project preview. The panels are proportionally resizable, but no longer undockable. You can easily see a full-screen preview of your project or source, however.
The program now has a basic welcome screen that lets you choose some settings for your project, including aspect ratio, resolution, and frame rate. You can click an Advanced Settings link to get to all the gory details and specs for your project. The Welcome panel also offers an interface choice between showing a source window or just one preview window.
Welcome screens in PowerDirector, VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio, and Premiere Pro are a bit richer in options, but the Vegas one is reasonably helpful, and much better than previous versions' complete lack of such help. Vegas Pro uses some terminology that may be off-putting to novices, such as envelope, bus, and quantize. That said, there’s plenty of tutorial content on the Vegas website.
There are four preset Window Layouts—Default, Audio, Color, and Source—and you can create custom ones of your own. You can only switch among them from the View > Window Layouts menu options, though some have keyboard shortcuts. Most competing programs have mode-switching buttons for more ease. There's no longer a storyboard layout.
The High DPI Scaling option in Preferences resulted in readable interface text on my 4K ThinkVision P27u-20 monitor. You can set dark, medium, light, and white interface backgrounds and customize track-head colors.
The program is extremely configurable. In fact, there are no fewer than 14 tabs on the Preferences dialog box. And the General page of Preferences has a list of 42 checkboxes with descriptive text. The Preferences dialog could use some tightening up. The General section is an endless list of checkboxes, and though the dialog already has too many tabs, some grouping of these options would help. There’s no search in Preferences, but I do appreciate the search box for everything in the source and effect panel.
You resize the timeline tracks with plus and minus controls at the lower right, but if the cursor changes to a magnifying glass when it’s above the timeline, the latter will shrink to a very small size. Nicely, spinning the mouse wheel forward and back lengthens and shortens the timeline zoom level.
Double-clicking on a clip makes for an easy way to get media from the source panel into the timeline. Double-clicking a thumbnail in the source panel also adds it to the timeline, but oddly there’s no right-click option for doing so.
A relatively new feature is Project Notes. You can color code notes and link them to a timecode in the timeline. You can even jump to the associated timecode from a note. It’s a useful tool, especially for collaboration.
There’s a huge list of keyboard shortcuts available, but some are nonstandard. For example, the Spacebar starts playback, but tapping it again doesn't pause in place, instead restarting from the previous location. You can change this in Preferences, though, and the keyboard shortcut list is entirely customizable. Vegas does use the familiar J, K, and L keys for reverse, stop, and forward. When you move the timeline position indicator, you can’t just move it as fast as you like. Instead, it moves at a ramping shuttle-style speed, though you can reposition the cursor without playing.
Vegas Hub and Stock Media
If you need to beef up your video with b-roll, Vegas Hub gives you an easy way to get video or audio clips. A separate Hub Explorer tab shows your content downloads, mobile uploads, and cloud-stored projects. If it's not open, you can only open the Hub dialog by digging into menus—a button to show it would be nice; there's only a button to log out of the Hub. The Vegas mobile app’s only function is to transfer media from your phone to your Vegas Hub, but there’s no option for accessing its online storage in the Import menu. One helpful option is a sample project, which lets you see how a complex movie appears on the timeline.
Basic Editing in Vegas Pro
You add clips to your project by clicking the Import button, choosing them from the in-program version of Windows’ File Explorer, or dragging them onto the source panel or timeline directly from File Explorer. Vegas Pro lets you work with all the formats today’s pro video editor may need, including AVCHD, BlackMagic Raw, HEVC, 8K, HDR, R3D, and XAVC S. When you add clips that use protected codecs, such as HEVC, Vegas displays a dialog as it activates the codec licenses. This didn't seem bad in the past, but it caused a program crash on my test PC. I found a support document telling me to enable outdated TLS security specs, and then the validation worked and I could go on merrily editing. Magix needs to fix this, as it's not acceptable to ask users to enable obsolete security just to use the program.
You add keyword tags to clips by checking the Media Tags checkbox from the Views button dropdown, and you can assign shortcut key combinations to add those you use frequently. That button also lets you switch between thumbnail, detail, and list views. The Clip Explorer on the left side of the source panel shows an Explorer-like tree structure for All Media, Media by Type (letting you switch between viewing only videos, photos, or audio clips), and Bins.
The timeline doesn’t show any tracks or track heads when you start editing, they only appear after you’ve added media. You get all the pro-level editing options—Normal Edit, Shuffle, Slip, Slide, Time Stretch, and Split. You can select a region and use Split (S on the keyboard) to remove it and close up the neighboring media. A nifty Smart Split option blends clips with a Warp Flow transition so that talking-head edits aren’t jarring.
Magnetic snapping is the default, which snaps clips together when you move them within range. Automatic Crossfades and Auto Ripple are also default settings. You can turn them off with buttons below the timeline. A Nested Timeline button lets you turn the current sequence into its own separate entity, to ease reuse in other projects.
Video Effects in Vegas Pro
Getting to the transitions choices in the source panel is easy: you click the Transitions bar under the source panel. Thumbnail diagrams depict the transitions’ effects, and they’re grouped into 26 categories, from 3D Blinds to Zoom. When you drag a transition onto the timeline, a dialog pops up with an old-school dialog of sliders and some talk about “plug-in chains.” Don’t let this deter you: You can dismiss it and the transition will be in place. Keep in mind that your clips need enough overlap. The program won’t fabricate that for you, as some other consumer video editors do.
AI Masking
New for Vegas Pro is its AI Smart Mask tool. This requires a separate AI module download and installation. You choose the tool from the effect plug-in list, and then click Analyze. For me, this drew a box around a person in my video clip, but then there was no indication of how to create a mask tightly around the subject. Clicking on the preview window revealed a rough mask and a Create Mask option in the dialog, but don't expect the kind of accuracy you get from any Adobe auto-masking tool.
Picture-in-Picture
Vegas offers a few different ways to create Picture-in-Picture (PiP) effects, with the Video FX Picture-in-Picture tool being the easiest. It offers six preset layouts, but when you drag a clip from the source panel or File Explorer, Vegas won’t nudge an existing track down, so creating PiP windows takes extra steps: You must either create a new track above the existing one you want it to overlay.
The Media FX Picture in Picture plug-in shows a dialog with sliders and numbers for positioning the PiP, but, thankfully, you can also resize and position the PiP on-screen in the video preview window. It’s somewhat less friendly than getting PiP effects in other consumer video editors, which often use a simpler process and offer more preset PiP templates. If you just want to crop a video, you have to open the effect from a list; other apps simply let you crop and resize in the preview window.
Motion Tracking With Vegas Pro
As with most advanced effects, you get to the Motion Tracker from the list of Video FX that appears along the left rail after tapping that mode’s button at the bottom of the source panel. Vegas recently moved the tool from Bezier Masking effect to its own dialog box. You get just a single effect that you drag onto to the clip you want to use tracking on in your timeline. Doing so pops up a message telling you to choose the Tools > Video > Motion Tracking menu option. This is not to be confused with the Track Motion choice in the same menu.
As with most motion tracking tools, you select a mask area to be tracked, but your only option is a quadrilateral selection area. There are five tracking options Perspective, Location, Rotation & Location, Scale & Location, Shape & Location. If one doesn’t work, you can try another. Most of the software I’ve tested doesn’t offer these choices. The Perspective option yielded odd results, so I’m not sure why it was the default. Unfortunately, the all-important buttons to start the tracking process were initially hidden below the bottom of the dialog, which could be disconcerting to novices.
You can track in both directions, forward, backward, or frame-by-frame. The last option lets you redraw the selection mask for fine-tuning. Location worked best for me, but I could see where the others could be useful. For example, perspective makes sense if you’re tracking a screen or a license plate. One plus: The tracking tool is faster than others I’ve used, even with the Precise setting.
The workflow for actually doing something with your track—applying effects, objects, or overlays—isn’t straightforward. I needed to consult a web video made by a Vegas user to figure this out. It turns out you have to add another track for whatever you want to use with the track—text, photo, video, or effect. Then you go back to the Motion Tracking dialog and choose the overlay or text from the dropdown. Getting a blur or other effect onto the tracked mask is much harder than in other programs. You need to transfer the motion track to a Bezier masking effect. You then have to reorder the effect chain to get a blur inside the track mask. This is not for those who want a quick project.
Speedup and Slowdown in Vegas Pro
Changing the speed of your video isn’t simple as it is in other programs because there’s no simple slower and faster choice. A Slow Motion plug-in under Effects first analyzes the media (a slow process) and then lets you select a speed reduction. In my testing, preview playback looked like a slideshow, whether I chose the Morph or Optical Flow method, though the latter was somewhat better.
To speed up video, you insert an envelope for the event, and then find the Velocity line in the timeline track and drag it up and down to speed up or slow down the event. It seemed odd that changing the speed this way didn’t change a clip’s length on the timeline. In most apps, if you speed up a clip, it gets shorter on the timeline, since it takes less time.
A freeze-frame tool is available after you’ve inserted an envelope, but that freezes the moment for the entire rest of the clip. An easier way is to manually split the clip, add space to the timeline, and insert a still image from your clip to create the effect.
Vegas Pro Color Grading
The color grading panel in Vegas Pro is clear, simple, and powerful. You get wheels for Lift (affects dark areas), Gamma (midtones), Gain (bright), and Offset (overall). You also get a Photoshop-like Curves graph, HSL sliders, and LUT support. A vectorscope shows your media’s color use, and you can switch the radar look to RGB Parade, Waveform, or Histogram. Included Look LUTs can give your video the appearance of Hollywood movie genres or old films. Magix has recently added even more color features, including level curves for hue, saturation, and luminance (lower-right section of screenshot above). There's also a new AI Colorization plug-in (which requires a separate download and installation). It did a decent job on a free old clip I found on Pexels, as shown below.
Vegas Pro Text and Titles
Text is considered a Plug-in in Vegas, and I wish it felt more surfaced and integrated. However, once you get in, there’s a decent choice of text formats and customizations. Many of these offer animations, which you can keyframe to taste. You can add shadow and outline effects to the many font choices. Most of this is done in the Video Media Generators dialog box, but you can adjust the size and position in the video preview window, but not the rotation. and you can't edit the text in the preview window as you can in many programs. Most of the consumer video editors I’ve reviewed—PowerDirector, Pinnacle, and VideoStudio—offer more engaging text options, such as using your video content to fill the text or wacky effects such as flames.
Multicam Editing in Vegas Pro
The app does support multicam editing, but like so much else in the program, it’s hard to find the tools you need. Indeed, I didn’t have much success with the tool. When I chose Synchronize Audio to Align Events, it thought for a moment and moved my clips on the timeline, but the clips were drastically not in sync. When I then aligned them visually using the audio waveforms and checked Enable Multicamera Editing, the Create Multicamera Track (which is the last step in the process) was grayed out. I will update this article if I can find a solution from Vegas support.
Vegas Pro Audio Editing
Vegas Pro shows audio waveforms in the timeline clips, and to separate audio from a video clip, you need to choose Group > Remove from a menu. A simple option to separate audio would be nice, but once you get the concept down it works fine. That’s even more the case when you learn the keyboard shortcut for this action is simply the U key.
The Mixing console opens when you choose the Audio Mixing windows layout, and it shows volume sliders (aka faders) for any audio tracks in your project along with a Master volume control (or bus). You can add FX for equalization, reverb, and noise gating. You won’t see any canned background soundtracks or sound samples in this view, though you can open the Vegas Hub to download these, all at extra cost. There’s no beat finding or clip-length matching such as you you find in Pinnacle Studio and Adobe Premiere Elements, however.
Exporting Options in Vegas Pro
You get a slew of formats, settings, and customizations for outputting your video project from Vegas Pro. But there are no choices for device type or online targets—other programs let you choose the iPhone or Vimeo as output targets, for example. Here it’s just codecs and numbers. There’s no MKV option either, but you can export to Apple PreRes, Ogg Vorbis, and of course Sony formats such as MXF and XDCAM EX.
Vegas Pro Performance
Vegas starts up quickly, moves briskly in most operations, and was mostly stable during my test editing. To get acceptable rendering speed, I had to customize the export template settings to use NV Encoder from Mainconcept AVC. I test on a Windows 11 PC sporting a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.
For the test, the program joins seven clips of various resolutions ranging from 720p all the way up to 8K, and applies cross-dissolve transitions between them. I note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio. The output movie is just over five minutes in length. As you can see from the graph, Vegas Pro is in the better half of programs in terms of rendering speed for the test project.
Is Vegas Pro a Winner?
With new pricing, some interface simplification, and nifty color adjustment tools, the developers of Vegas Pro are taking steps toward appealing to video editing enthusiast as opposed to professionals. But they’re not giant steps. The program still retains too much of its legacy complexity and lacks many of the conveniences found in competitors. For more modern and complete tools, look to our enthusiast-level Editors’ Choice video editing software picks, Corel VideoStudio and CyberLink PowerDirector.
Vegas Pro offers a full slate of video editing tools, but they’re not organized in a way that nonprofessional enthusiasts can easily grasp.
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