Interestingly enough, this book started out as a small guide to what became Vegas 2.0. The moniker of Vegas Video was dropped in the middle of the project, and the same happened with the Vegas Audio name, thereby creating a product known simply as Vegas.

As an audio engineer, I have used Vegas as my tool of choice for a long time, thus inspiring my audio-based tutorials for Vegas. In becoming a videographer/editor to further my musical vision many years ago, Vegas Video 2.0 soon became my application of choice when I had the opportunity to see it in an alpha version in Madison, Wisconsin, back in 1999. It became the perfect meld of my two favorite passions in one application.

Therefore, I wrote this book really intending to please two different groups of users: one being the audio user, and the other being the video user. Audio users rarely think of the video user, and that s fine. Video users, however, absolutely must become familiar with the tools of the audio user; hence, the fairly intense audio for video section in this book. Moreover, this book has many tips, tricks, and techniques that I ve learned over the years as an audio engineer, compressionist, and videographer/editor, some of which I felt were critical to share. Others merely appear because I felt they were of interest.

The intent of this book is to teach and inform, yet also to provide reminders to professionals who have done it all and heard it all ...