New Vegas Buyer - Do I Need Any Extras?
 

So I'm about to buy Vegas Pro 9.

There seems to be several add-on packages and I'm not sure if I need to consider these or not.

Perhaps the most relevant is Cinescore, as I've always considered that you need good audio for a video to be successful.

But do I need this? Doesn't Pro 9 by itself provide functionality like this?

Any opinions gratefully accepted.

I'd also be interested in your views on what other, if any, add-ons I should consider.

I can say that Vegas Pro 9 does NOT provide the functionality of Cinescore. Cinescore actually CREATES music which you can modify to suit your taste. Vegas just uses the music that Cinescore creates.

John, you may want to look at Sound Forge as an audio program that complements Vegas.
Sound Forge expands on the capabilities of the audio tools built into Vegas as well as giving you some that aren't there such as Noise Reduction.
To give you an idea, here are Vegas and Sound Forge comparison charts.
While they look at the differences between their respective lines, it's worth taking a look at the audio capabilities of Vegas vs. Sound Forge.
Only you can decide if it's worth the extra money.

The add-ons you need would depend completely on what you're doing. If you don't have specific goals right now I would start with Vegas alone and work up as your needs grow.

And yes, as you alluded in your post, Vegas alone has some decent audio capabilities by itself, and since you haven't described what you're doing I can't say, but you may not need any additional audio tools right out of the gate.

If you do multicam edits, photo montages, and the like you will want to try the free demo of Excalibur which adds tremendous power to Vegas. I personally use a competing product by Vasst which is extremely useful called Ultimate S, and I couldn't live without it.

The multicam function is Vegas is not my favorite tool so I use Ultimate s for multicam editing, many others use Excalibur. You can download both from their respective websites for free, they are fully functional. Highly recommended. They are similar in many ways, so you may not need both. But that is what the demos are for. google them and they'll pop right up.

For HD footage (M2t files) there is Gearshift, which you should check out at VASST also. Works like a charm.

I tried out Sonic Fire Pro and like it better than Cinescore for genrated music. I've found that Cinscore will over or undershoot the time I give it when creating a short clip. Sonic Fire seems to be more accurate.

Stan is correct, but you can force Cinescore to adapt by modifying the scaling amount or length to what you need. It approximates on the first pass but you can force it to fit any length you need. I really like Cinescore for scoring pieces, there are some really great themes out there especially if you are not very musically inclined. I would also check out the scripts/plug-ins Jeff recommends, both are very popular and from what I hear for very good reasons.

I use Sound Forge as an add-on for Vegas. I also have Pro Tools on another computer for really indepth stuff, but Sound Forge makes it easy for some quick and simple tweaks since both Vegas and SF are on the same computer and interact very well.

Sony Vegas Pro is a very comprehensive NLE. As Jeff said, it would be wise to learn how to do everything you can inside Vegas to start off. Then you may discover that the ProTitler isn't as strong as you need and you may want to invest in After Effects. While the audio capabilities of Vegas are second to no other NLE, sometimes you need to do detailed surgery on an audio file and that's where Sound Forge or Adobe Audition come in handy. However, most typical projects can be started and finished without ever leaving Vegas.

Download AAV Colorlab. I use it quite a bit.
AAV ColorLab
Works for 32 & 64bit versions of Vegas.

Download all the free plugins from VASST's website. There's a lot of good knowledge there too.

Yes, definitely worth getting familiar with one of the many "jewels" in Vegas' crown, and that's scripting. Many wonderful free scripts available, and some very worthwhile ones to purchase at reasonable cost. With some of these, tasks that could take hours can be accomplished in minutes, sometimes in seconds.