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Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 09/02/09

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The Sony Vegas Pro Production Assistant

You will save time and money with Production Assistant

By Jeffrey P. Fisher

Summary:
Sony enhances its Vegas Pro software with a separate plug-in full of tools to automate and streamline your editing workflow. Read the full review here

As editors we are always looking for ways to be more efficient so we can focus on what we do best: telling stories with sound and visuals. But let's face it, there are a lot of mundane and routine tasks when editing that swallow our time but don't call upon our collective creative inspiration.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could automate some of this routine and have a more efficient workflow? Well here's the tool that can save you time without compromising your art. It's the Vegas Pro Production Assistant (PA), Sony's new plug-in for its flagship NLE, Vegas Pro 9.

Installing the software is quick and it leaves a tiny surprise on your desktop - an icon that launches the program outside of Vegas. You read that right, this plug-in works both inside and outside the application for which it was designed.

Aimed at broadcasters and others who produce standardized content for air, Webisodes, and/or clients, PA offers tools to get started without first launching the Vegas software. Maybe you do spots with a standard opening/closing and all you change is the middle. Essentially, you develop a template using empty events, or slugs, as placeholders for the media you will add. Next, you launch the PA desktop icon from outside Vegas (it doesn't even need to be running). Here you recall the template, select and add fresh content, and then PA does the prep work for you. In seconds the Vegas NLE opens with your project ready for tweaking so you can finalize your edit.

Sony Production Assistant can run outside of Vegas Pro allowing you to build projects before launching the NLE.

Now don't think the program edits for you; it doesn't. It's more like its name implies. You get an assistant to prepare your Timeline per your specs and then have it waiting for you to add your magic.

Production Assistant is also a powerful and automated batch processor. For instance, you can select hundreds of video files, add a network bug, company logo, or other watermark, put a 16:9 background behind any 4:3 media, add an overall Cine-Look, and then output those files into various formats. Once you set up the batch, PA does all this work without your further intervention. Tasks that may take a day of your time can be left to PA instead. And that frees you to do more creative things.

Plug-in(side)
Once inside the Vegas application, the Production Assistant plug-in adds even more timesaving and powerful functions to your toolbox. Launch the plug-in from the View > Extensions menu, and it becomes a fully dockable window with three tabs: Source Media, Processing, Target Output. Also, there's a row of icons along its top that offer additional tools.

The Source tab enables you to add additional media to your project or use the current project as your source and process it with the other plug-in functions.

The Processing tab supports adding a laundry list of common jobs from adding image overlays, processing colors, and cropping the aspect ratio to normalizing audio events, reducing interlace flicker, and converting to widescreen. Again, you can apply this to the media you indicate on the Source tab or to the currently open project.