Sony Vegas video editing software

[Pea-n-Me]

I know it must be someone as I bought it last year on a recommendation from here.

Anyway, I have a few questions about it if anyone can help.

I'm going to be making a slideshow of my son's AAU baseball team this year. The team has been practicing all fall and winter, played about 36 regular season games and was in four tournaments (one still to come). And I shot many of them, so I have a ton of pictures to work with. Not just of the players, but of families, siblings, and all the fun we had on the sidelines with cookouts and such.

I was wondering if anyone knows if I can add popular (ie copyrighted) songs to the slideshow? **I've done slideshows before and this is where I've always had a problem.**

Alternatively, if anyone knows of a very simple program I could use, where I could add popular songs, could you let me know? My plan is to show it at our last team get-together of the season, then give a copy to each player so it must be able to go on DVD.

Any guidance is appreciated, but I'm looking to keep it very simple! Also, if anyone has any song ideas, that would be great, too.

Thank you! I'm excited about doing this!

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I used to use Vegas for video editing, but never for slideshows. It won't know whether the songs you add are copyrighted or not. It's up to you to make sure that you comply with any applicable laws. It cannot, however use copy-protected music. If you bought DRM's music, you'll have to crack it (usually pretty easy) before you can use it. Never by DRM music.

For slideshows, the program I most often see being used is ProShow. I've got it and I like it. Then one thing that it doesn't do well is creating slideshows for display on a computer (rather than a DVD player or streaming video file). I prefer Pictures2Exe for those.

In any of the cases (Vegas, ProShow, or Pictures2Exe), the software won't know whether you have rights to use the music. If you have a standard MP3 file, it will let you use it. If you have a DRM'ed file, you can't use it even if you have a legal right to do so.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Thanks, Mark. I saw someone tonight who did a slideshow for my kids' class last week and spoke to her about what she used. The key seems to be using the MP3 file, as you mentioned. I will give it a try. Hopefully it will come out, I finished the song list today.

 

[rtphokie]

I know it must be someone as I bought it last year on a recommendation from here.

Anyway, I have a few questions about it if anyone can help.

I'm going to be making a slideshow of my son's AAU baseball team this year. The team has been practicing all fall and winter, played about 36 regular season games and was in four tournaments (one still to come). And I shot many of them, so I have a ton of pictures to work with. Not just of the players, but of families, siblings, and all the fun we had on the sidelines with cookouts and such.

I was wondering if anyone knows if I can add popular (ie copyrighted) songs to the slideshow? **I've done slideshows before and this is where I've always had a problem.**

Alternatively, if anyone knows of a very simple program I could use, where I could add popular songs, could you let me know? My plan is to show it at our last team get-together of the season, then give a copy to each player so it must be able to go on DVD.

Any guidance is appreciated, but I'm looking to keep it very simple! Also, if anyone has any song ideas, that would be great, too.

Thank you! I'm excited about doing this!

I've been using Vegas since version 4 something. Great application. Works like an audio editor so it makes more sense to me.

As others have mentioned, drag an mp3 (or just about any other audio format your machine can playback) onto the timeline and an audio track will be created. Give it a couple seconds to scan the file and give you a graphic version of the track.

One tip with slide shows. There is a preferences setting that controls the default transition between images and default time an image is on screen, use it. The default is a jump cut and a duration that is way to long.

Here is a tutorial on creating slideshows using Vegas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLle6dbnf88

There are easier packages tyo use (ProShow is a good one) but they aren't as flexible as a full featured non-linear editor like Vegas.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Thanks, rtphokie. The link will be very helpful.

Mark, what does DRM stand for?

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Thanks, rtphokie. The link will be very helpful.

Mark, what does DRM stand for?

DRM is an acronym for Digital Rights Management. It means that the song seller has encrypted the song so that you can only play it back in ways that they find acceptable.

The most common DRM is on Apple's iTunes. If you buy a DRMed song on iTunes, you can only play it back on your iPod, in iTunes, or on one of a handful of other iPods. You can't play it back on non-Apple music players. You can't put it into slideshows. It's easy enough to get around the limitation. There is software (probably illegal in the US) that will break the encryption. You can also use iTunes to write the song to a CD and then convert the song on the CD into a non-DRM MP3 file.