Sony Vegas Production Workflow

Explore the three programs bundled with Sony Vegas Pro. Learn how to edit footage in Vegas, clean up the audio in Sound Forge, and burn a disc of your movie in DVD Architect.

Sony Vegas Pro bundles three programs, each of which serve a key purpose in the video production workflow. Vegas is at its heart, while Sound Forge takes your production audio to a professional level and DVD Architect helps you to get your video to the people who want to see it. Steve Grisetti shows how footage makes its way through each of these programs in the typical workflow for a professional-quality movie. Follow along as he takes a batch of raw video clips and assembles them into a scene in Vegas, performs audio sweetening and cleanup in Sound Forge, and prepares the final project in DVD Architect for output as a DVD or Blu-ray disc.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files
• Introducing the programs and exploring their strengths

1. Creating a Video Sequence in Vegas

• Starting a project and adding media
• Adding media to the timeline and trimming and slicing
• Understanding Vegas' Auto Ripple settings
• Building a story or scene from raw footage
• Using multiple tracks of video and audio to build a scene
• Adding a music soundtrack to your movie
• Adding titles

2. Audio FX in Vegas

• Vegas audio FX vs. Sound Forge audio tools
• Adding audio FX in Vegas
• The Vegas audio FX plugin chain

3. Editing and Sweetening Vegas Audio in Sound Forge

• Transferring a Vegas audio track to Sound Forge
• The Sound Forge interface and window layouts
• Audio editing basics
• Cleaning up audio with Noise Gate, Dynamics, and the normalizer
• Using a plugin chain rather than adding effects directly to a file
• Transferring your finished audio from Sound Forge back to Vegas
• Adding Sound Forge audio as a Vegas event "take"

4. Creating Audio in Sound Forge for Your Vegas Project

• Starting a new Sound Forge project
• Recording narration in Sound Forge
• Mixing several audio sources in Sound Forge

5. Final Audio Mixing for Your Project in Vegas

• Mixing multiple tracks of audio in Vegas
• Polishing the final mix in Sound Forge

6. Preparing Your Vegas Project for DVD Architect

• Adding scene markers to your timeline
• Outputting a loop region only
• Outputting finished video for DVD Architect

7. DVD Architect Project Setup

• Starting a project and setting up properties
• Using DVD Architect themes and buttons
• Customizing a menu page with a background and sound
• Working with menu text

8. Adding Video to Disc and Creating Menu Buttons

• Adding video to the timeline and creating a button
• Customizing a button's look and animation
• Using color sets and overlays to highlight your disc animation
• Creating and editing scene markers
• Using scene markers to create a scene selection submenu

9. Advanced DVD Architect Authoring

• Adding a media clip or logo before the menu
• Adding optional subtitles to your video
• Adding an alternative language track or commentary track to video

10. Outputting Your Finished Disc

• Previewing your disc
• Optimizing your disc
• Saving your output as a prepared file and burning with third-party software
• Burning your disc

Conclusion

• Next steps