Sunday, February 22, 2015

Sony Movie Studio 13 – Might be time to look elsewhere …

I have a really complex video I am rendering right now … and have been for 9 hours and 23 minutes …

image

Wow … the movie is slightly under 90 minutes long, so 10 hours of rendering means that rendering times are 6.7x real time, which is frankly abysmal. Note that I have a fairly fast 8 core machine (AMD 8150) and a pair of GTX570 CUDA cards, so this machine is set up for rendering. I did that intentionally. Yet it renders like a VW Beetle at the Indy 500.

I have staunchly supported Sony Movie Studio for years because it is so incredibly powerful … but I have come to realize that it sucks time while editing and while rendering. In fact, there are many articles out there that compare rendering times with consumer NLEs (non-linear editors) and Movie Studio always comes in last … and by some distance.

And it does not help that Sony are spinning off some of their non-core businesses, thus throwing the future of Vegas and Movie Studio into doubt, at least in my mind.

So … the hunt begins. Adobe? Cyberlink? We shall see …


UPDATE

After an intense week of learning Premiere CC and PowerDirector, I think Sony Movie Studio still represents the best value in video editing that exists. While PowerDirector has incredible multicam support and Premiere Pro has incredible built in tools, Movie Studio has a much nicer clip editing interface in my opinion. So if your needs are at the hobby level, then Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite should be on your radar. The deal of the century in my opinion .

But … for professionals, Adobe CC looks to be the best choice by a mile … (with a nod to FCP for Apple users.)