excalibur gets my vote...

leslie

FYI, plugins aren't as necessary as some other software when using Vegas. It has quite a bit "under the hood" already. Protype, the curves in the pan/crop, color correction, video scopes,

But some things that have helped me out a bit:
cinegobs keyer: Not a plugin but a VERY nice keying program for the best price of all: $0.

bouncing ball transition
cubes transition

you can run any VST plugin for audio

sony noise reduction is pretty darn good (expensive though... odds are you can find a deal with NR + Sound Forge for the same price as NR alone)

I second Excalibur & Ultimate S. Both good (scripts are a great resource, check out http://www.jetdv.com for lots of scripting info)

>>...what are some the recommended plug-ins...

In my opinion:

1.) Ultimate S
2.) Excalibur
3.) Velvet matter items (lighting effects)
4.) Pixelan Spicemaster
5.) NewBlue items (video and audio)

With these items + Vegas, you can get a huge amount done.

End

Excalibur for all kinds of workflow enhancements and Radiance for light- & blur-fx and level corrections.

Marco

On every project, I use Ultimate S/ReelPaks, and on every project with multicamera work, I use Excalibur. I can't imagine not having both of these plugins.

I'd like to thank everyone for the feedback.
Just got the delivery notification from Sony and it looks like Monday I'll be installing and experimenting with it.

Until then I'll spend some time checking out all the recommendations that were posted.

Thanks again for your help.

Mike Crash has some great plugins for Vegas and best of all they're free.

http://www.mikecrash.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=6

I haven't tried them in Vegas 8 yet but I used them in V5,6,and 7 all of the time.

Greg, It would appear Mike Crash's site no longer provides a single valid link.... too bad, I was looking for that smart smoother.

...It would appear Mike Crash's site no longer provides a single valid link....

Go to this page on his site and you get your choice of all of them in a package or individually.

Mike

looks like they all work for me.

Vegas Pro 8 / DVD Architect Pro 4.5 successfully installed once it arrived this morning.
Pretty impressed with what I've been able to do with it so far - looks like Ulead VS 11+ usage from here out will be diminishing.

I like the Mike Crash Auto-Levels plug and the Deshake script. Also there is a script that sets selected clips to "match aspect ratio" that has earned a button on my toolbar. If I were better at shooting and colorizing video, I suppose I wouldn't need either... <grin>

David

These are free and fantastic:

Kjaerhus Classic Audio plugins.

Debugmode Frameserver for transferring video to other applications like VirtualDub or Cinecraft Encoder.

There appears to be quite a consensus as to the preferred plug-ins for Vegas.

Query: If I am not doing and multicam work, and the low volume and slow pace of my work demand no work flow enhancements, would those who recommended both Ultimate S and Excalibur still do so based on other criteria?

I have already purchased Pixelan based on what I have heard here and seen as per my free trial. New Blue video FX are nice but a bit pricey. As far as the New Blue audio Fx are concerned, many of them already exist in Vegas. Is there a qualitative difference? Has anyone bought the audio package, and if so why? Is there any other audio FX that anyone would care to recommend?

I also gave the Radiance samples a quick look on the Vasst site, but while they were very nice, there did not seem to be all that many for what they were asking.

The cynic in me can’t help but wonder that maybe this is actually a consensus by default because there aren’t all that many plug-ins for Vegas to begin with.

If we would extend the category to stand alone apps that work nicely with Vegas, what would be the top ten?

Bill

eVoke,

Ditto on welcome aboard :)

As mentioned here, there is a lot of power in Vegas even without plugins -- and -- as you can already see, it's a friendly posse of people here with some solid and unpretentious experience in editing. I'm not among the most experienced but have always felt respected and have learned much.

My VP8 and video editing has been on standby for a while due to other life priorities, but I still swing by here due to the sense of community.

So aside from basic stuff that one can find in the Vegas help files, feel free to ask questions and take advantage of this corner of the Net. I've called it my unofficial film school - and hang-out lounge :)

A few more nice free VST audio plug-ins:

Voxengo - [url=http://www.voxengo.com/group/freevst/] (the 'MSED' mid-side processor - useful for stereo width control - and 'SPAN' real-time spectrum analyzer I use quite often).

Aixcoustic 'Electri-Q' equalizer - [url=http://www.aixcoustic.com/index.php/Electri-Q-posihfopit/30/0/]

Reaper 'ReaFIR' - [url=http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/] - EQ/Compressor/Gate/Subtractor (noise reducer)

Tony

hi,

I have installed MIke Crash's plugins but the all show up in Vegas but not the BALL 1.1....What's wrong? I have checked the sony/filters directory and the ball.dll is there as are the other. Any clues?

I am using vegas7.

kind regards

joni