About Me
My name is Derek Moran and I am the creator of MovieStudioZen.com
I was born in Sydney and have lived in Australia all my life. I feel blessed to live on this Ancient Continent and couldn't imagine living anywhere else in the world at this time of great change. Below is a snapshot of my story and at the very bottom I talk about why I started using Sony Vegas Movie Studio to do my video editing. Today I use Sony Vegas Pro to do most of my Video Editing, however I still use Movie Studio Platinum so that I can help beginners learn how to use all this software.
My Experience in the Matrix
I am a "Jack of all Trades" and have studied Landscape Architecture, Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture and Australian Bush Flower Essences. I have worked in many jobs including a Hardware Store, Timber Yard, Plumbing Store, Managed a Wholesale Warehouse, Managed a Music Store selling CD's and DVD's, Cleaned the blood and guts off the floors, walls and ceilings of Operating Theatres at night, Cleaned Hospital Wards and Served Food and Drinks to Hospital Patients.
What I do when I am not making Video Tutorials
My main passion's today are: Traditional Medicine, Healing, Meditation, Art and anything to do with Computers, including Video Editing, Making DVD's and Blu Ray Discs.
I am an Australian Bush Flower Essence Practitioner which means I use the essence from Australian Wildflowers to heal people in a very holistic way. The flowers that grow in Australia are some of the oldest and most highly evolved plants on Earth. The harsh environmental conditions in Australia have cultivated robust plants that have a very powerful life force energy. That energy leads to plants and flowers with remarkable healing qualities, that have the ability to heal on the Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual levels of any living creature. So when I get the chance, I love to explore the bush, searching for flowers and regenerating myself in Nature. If you are interested to know more about Australian Bush Flower Essences, what the flowers look like and what their healing qualities are, then please check out www.ausflowers.com.au
Six years ago I started painting with no formal training at all - here is a favourite painting of mine.
Why did I choose Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum as my Video Editing Software Suite ?
In 2006 I had been using a version of Roxio Creator Suite to do some basic editing and make my first DVDs - Roxio was OK for an absolute noob, however it lacked controls to fix basic problems like incorrect aspect ratios.
In 2008 I bought my first Digital Video Camera - a compact Standard Definition Canon FS100 with a removable flash memory. At the same time I bought a fast Duo Core 17" Acer Laptop to do all my editing on. I started researching Video Editing suites and quickly became overwhelmed with the choice available and the conflicting reviews that existed on the internet.
After tossing a coin about 100 times, I took the plunge and ordered a boxed version of Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack. Vegas Movie Studio had on average fairly decent reviews at the time, and my thinking was "well Sony makes video cameras, so you would think they should know something about supporting video editing products". I also liked that Pro Pack (now known as the Production Suite Version) came with three programs: Vegas Movie Studio, DVD Architect Studio and Sound Forge Audio Studio, PLUS lots of cool extras like the New Blue Fx and Transitions Pack.
As I reflect back on that decision four years ago in 2008, I am very glad with the choice I made. I still believe to this day that Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Production Suite is the best value Video Editing & Disc Creation Suite in it's price range on the market. Compared to other popular editing programs, I personally find Sony Vegas to be very intuitive in the way it represents information graphically on the timeline - this is one of it's big strengths from a learning perspective and why I still enjoy using today.
How did you Learn Vegas Movie Studio and DVD Architect Studio ?
With GREAT difficulty at first !!!
Back in 2008 there was not much free material on the Internet and YouTube to teach how to use Vegas Movie Studio. Most tutorials I found at that time seemed to be full of "old" or overly complicated information which didn't help at all, because they always skipped over the basics - THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL!!!
So I realised pretty quickly that I would have to start doing lots of experimentation, through "trial and error", to work out the correct way to render a video for YouTube.
Eventually something clicked, and suddenly I realised I was my own best teacher.
What happened next ?
Once I really started to understand the program and enjoy using it with relative ease, I often thought about all the other people in the world that were trying to learn how to use Vegas - especially for making YouTube videos. I realised that a great many people needed some help to get started with the basics of how to set up a project and render a video for YouTube.
Plenty of people were already making videos for Vegas Pro users on YouTube, but not many people ever talked about Vegas Movie Studio - the program that most people were actually using as beginners and because it is affordable. So that's when and why I started my YouTube Channel - Movie Studio Zen, dedicated to tutorials about how to use Vegas Movie Studio - especially for new users of the program.
Movie Studio Zen was born in August 2010 on YouTube and has now grown into something that I could not have predicted.
Because of what has happened, I have now created this website MovieStudioZen.com to accompany my YouTube Channel and act as my home base on the Internet for all my tutorials and troubleshooting information related to all things Vegas, and lots of other related topics concerning Video Editing, Disc Creation and Computer Optimization & Construction.
You can follow me on my personal Google+ page for Derek Moran here.
All the best with your Creations.
Derek Moran
January 2012
