Adobe wasn't the first software company to strip down its pro-level video editing program for a mainstream market. Sonic Foundry (now owned by Sony) did just that some years ago with Vegas Movie Studio.

Despite its seniority of years, Sony's offering has yet to grab a lion's share of the mainstream market, and still struggles to get noticed next to the likes of Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio and Ulead VideoStudio 11.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 comes in two distinct versions - the basic 'vanilla' flavour, and a Platinum Edition, which adds HDV support and Dolby AC3 sound encoding to the toolbox.

At first glance, the look and layout of Vegas Movie Studio is identical to its big brother, Vegas 8.0. The interface is composed of a large timeline, video monitor, audio monitor and system explorer panels, which are tabbed to serve also as a media trimmer, clip bin, or browser for transitions and filter effects.

Limitations of Movie Studio start to become apparent, however, with the realisation that there are only four video tracks and four audio tracks available on the timeline.

The tracks themselves have their purpose pre-defined before any media is applied, as opposed to those in the full version of Vegas which become audio or video tracks only when clips are dropped onto them.

Aside from this fundamental difference, there's very little to distinguish between Vegas and Vegas Movie Studio in terms of design and layout, which will serve users well, allowing them to upgrade to the pro-level software without encountering horrendous new learning curves.

Quite how well Vegas Movie Studio fares in terms of features depends on which version you opt for. The basic version is quite limited in its supported video formats, and won't edit HDV footage, while the platinum edition will.

This is an important point to note, as HDV camcorders are becoming so inexpensive and attractive to mainstream users. Also, the Platinum Edition will read from AVCHD devices (but won't write to them). DV is fully supported in both flavours, complete with device control, batch capture and scene detection. Video can also be imported from Sony DVD camcorders in both versions.