I use Vegas 8 Pro. I started with Vegas Movie Studio Platinum v6 and can thoroughly recommend the current version.

Prior to that I used Pinnacle Studio (v9) which was/is a great program - very intuitive - hailed by many as the easiest to get into. Sadly, it was let down by major stability problems and like many others I jumped ship.

Vegas Movie Studio IS limited compared to Pro, but it's very well featured compared to the competition. I could probably do 95%+ of my editing on VMS. How often do you really need more than 4 video tracks and 4 audio tracks? How useful will you find scrpting? Do you need Velocity Envelopes or Secondary Colour Correction? All useful and desirable facilities, but until you're sure Vegas is the product for you I recommend you start with VMS.

If you play with the demo and like Vegas, I'd suggest buying VMS(Platinum) as it's a comparatively small outlay. If you grow with it and really like it you can upgrade to Pro later and it won't have cost you very much more than if you's simply purchased Pro in the first place.

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Tim