Sony Vegas (Pro) is an excellent video editor on the whole and practically the favorite video tool to most media workers, which is easy to manipulate and supports a big collection of video effects such as color correction, pixel aspect ratio rendering and velocity/color balance change. Despite of the powerful abilities, people find it hard to find a good Sony Vegas alternative, which is especially a problem when the Vegas software crashes unexpectedly or people hope to find a Mac version of Sony Vegas. In this post, I will show you the best software similar to Sony Vegas (for Windows).

Video editing software similar to Sony Vegas

1. Adobe Premiere Pro

Price: $799.00 to buy

Adobe premiere pro is an excellent video editor like Sony Vegas, easy to use, runs swiftly, and supports complete video processing including script writing, editing, encoding as well as delivery. The maximum resolution supported by Adobe premiere pro is 10,240 × 8,192. While Sony Vegas accepts a big range of source formats and renders video at a faster speed, Adobe premiere aims for Flash and online marketsv, and wins with heaps of external tools such as the entire CD production set supported. Note that HD video is not supported in the trial version.

Download Adobe Premiere Pro free

2. Adobe After Effects

Price: $999.00

Different from Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects (AE) is specializing in visual and motion effects of photographs, text (3D), etc., allowing users to polish video production in various effects, preset animations, precise tracking controls, and delivering robust abilities to process complex projects as a result of native 64-bit support. The latest AE has integrated an array of useful tools including Refine Edge tool, Warp Stabilizer VFX, etc. Adobe After Effects comes a bit expensive from the angle of price, but students are able to receive a good discount. As good video editing software similar Sony Vegas, AE offers a user-friendly interface and helpful tutorials, whereas it is less convenient to a beginner.

Download Adobe After Effects free

3. Lightworks

Price: Free

Lightworks is a far cry from Sony Vegas, which is less professional or complete than Sony Vegas but comes free of charge, providing a dedicated and rapid way to edit (trim) video together with an unapproachable auto sync feature. Opposite to paid video editor programs (Sony Vegas, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, etc.), Lightworks comes with an inscrutable interface and that users typically spend a long time to get used to it. Since everything has a learning curve, it is not bad to grasp a free Sony Vegas alternative after a period of efforts.

Download Lightworks video editor free

4. Magix Movie Edit Pro

Price: $79.99

Magix Movie Edit Pro is a practical video editor offered at a reasonable price, allowing users to split, crop, edit video (2D and 3D) with high-quality special effects, cinematic transitions & templates, full HDV/AVCHD camcorders, travel-route animation, online publishing, etc. Magix Movie Edit Pro provides a straightforward interface, making it pretty easy to get started. However, the current 2013 version is less smooth and crashes at times as per users' feedback on CNET (previous versions function fairly well).

Download Magix Movie Edit Pro free

Besides, there are also guys recommending Windows Movie Maker as the best Sony Vegas replacement. As Windows Movie Maker belongs to another group, you may be interested in the best free video editing software.

As to Sony Vegas-like video editing software for Mac, you can refer to iMovie or Final Cut Pro.