I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. If SCS intended to eliminate the compatibility with Cineform, it should have been clearly stated in the Release Notes. There are far too many people using CFHD to not, as a minimum, at least advise users of the change. When Premiere Pro CS4 first came out, it was clear that it did not initially work with Cineform, so that stopped a lot of PP users from upgrading immediately and wasting money on the upgrade.

Blink,
I didn't take it as a Cineform conspiracy, and you may be right about Cineform needing to take their responsibility here also. It's just frustrating as a consumer when you are stuck in the middle between 2 software developers; they each always say the other is responsible to fix things. If you or I produce a video product for a client, and it doesn't play for them, it would be poor business practice to say, "It must be your system, sorry." No, you'd find out what changes to make so that the file plays on THEIR system. The customer CARES NOT what format, bitrate, etc you are using; they just want to see the damn video. I care not who's fault it is; I just want to use the product I already paid for, for which I hadn't been told wouldn't work with Cineform when they either knew or should have known it wouldn't.

I'm not a Vegas basher or a Blink basher :); check my posts. But this is sure annoying to me.

Edit: the above post is EXACTLY right. It should have been in the Release Notes at minimum. They took the time to inform me it wasn't quite ready to work with Cinescore. Compatibility with Cineform is far more important to many users than that. And they KNEW this version didn't work with Cineform. If they didn't that's even worse.

It'd all be a lot simpler if SCS got with the times and got away from vfw Anything about vfw is so old it's now in M$'s archives and M$'s last words hardly fill one with confidence. CF are one of the few 3rd party codec developers that have supported Vegas. SCS should play real nice with them. Compared to what others in the development industry have said about Vegas it needs all the friends it can get.

Bob.

Again, Sony is not responsible for third party manufacturers. I don't think they intended to do ANYTHING but improve Vegas's performance. That's where their job starts and stops. The various third party manufacturers have their job... and that is to make sure the their products are compatible.
It's no different than with the XP to Vista change over and the new drivers that hardware manufacturers had to come up with. And as you noted, the same thing happened with PP. Everybody has a job to do and they don't make money by doing some one else's job. Now if you're saying that Sony will lose millions of dollars in sales because Cineform at present doesn't work... then maybe... maybe not (I kind of doubt that they will lose much at all). But the REAL loser will be Cineform... so you can be sure that they'll get with the program as fast as they can.

Excalibur had to update their installer, Ultimate S had to do the same... they all do. Cineform I guess is a bit behind schedule... but I am confident that they too will work it out.

I beg to differ, as Cineform works fine with other NLEs on both Macs and PCs. I'm also confident that a solution will be found soon, but the real loser in the short run is Vegas and SCS. A lot of PC users that are new to video and NLEs, especially people with the hybrid DSLRs like the Canon 5d2, are enamored with Vegas, since it is less imposing to new users. These new users have been temporarily abandoned and don't understand why.

This is exactly why I didn't upgrade immediately to Vegas 9. I've learned my lesson, from before with Vegas 8. This is why I rely on you and other people in the community to test a new release, before jumping into the fray.

"I beg to differ, as Cineform works fine with other NLEs on both Macs and PCs. I'm also confident that a solution will be found soon, but the real loser in the short run is Vegas and SCS."

Really? You think Sony loses a lot of money over something like this?

Not bloody likely. Companies don't like losing money so they tend to do something about it when they do. They haven't done a thing (other than improver their product). My guess is that the sales they MAY lose over something like this is hardly worth batting an eye over.

"This is exactly why I didn't upgrade immediately to Vegas 9."
But you will when cineform does THEIR job and gets it all worked out.... so has Sony really lost any money???

Cineform was informed well before the 9 release about upcoming changes. The fact is they are stretched to the limit right now with ppro compatability, upcoming changes to the Mac, Vegas and new product releases (3d support and a new expensive video capture application co developed with another company). Give them time. If you want things to move quicker, bug Cineform, not SCS. The new Vegas file SDK is out there.

Okay. I changed the Subject title. Fair enough point that I shouldn't have assumed It was Sony's job to fix it, but Sony was less than forthright in not letting us know that it wouldn't work. As I said they noted in their own release notes other software that doesn't yet work with Vegas 9. It may be Cineform's fault, it may be Sony's. Cineform reps seem like good guys... They say Sony ripped the rug out from underneath them. Sony seems like a good company... some of you say it's Cineform's fault.

I CARE NOT. It needs to be fixed. Until then: DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY UPGRADING TO VEGAS 9 IF USING CINEFORM INTERMEDIATES.

It certainly is a big surprise and disappointment to me that V9 doesn't yet have Cineform Intermediate support, at least in the 32 bit release. Thanks for alerting us.

Jerry

"but Sony was less than forthright in not letting us know that it wouldn't work"

And again... for the third time, Sony is not responsible for third party products. They are not responsible for hyping them, advertising them, testing them or even speaking on behalf of their owners. In fact they have no right to speak about Cineform... it's NOT their product. Cineform and Sony are NOT in business with each other. The ONLY responsibility Sony has in this respect (and it's not even a responsibility tof theirs) is to make sure the SDK's are out there for the third party developers.

Now come on... get serious. It's going to rain over here this afternoon.... i suppose that's Sony's fault in some way too right?

This is strictly a cineform issue. If anybody dropped the ball here (if you even want to refer to this as dropping the ball at all), it's cineform for not being ready to go.... but I wouldn't waste too much time worrying about it... they're probably working on the issue as we speak.

Again, for the 2nd time: I CARE NOT whose fault it is. I've whittled my comments down to this statement, and each time you reply it helps raise attention to my point by pushing this post back up to the top: DON'T WASTE TIME AND MONEY UPGRADING TO VEGAS 9 YET IF USING CINEFORM INTERMEDIATES.

I think we have understood that Sony is not responsible for third party products. So what do we take as intermediary codec ? Why hasn't Sony his own intermediary codec that could be used by other applications ? So we wouldn't have that Cineform discussion ! But until this is the case, we need the Cineform codec !

And again... for the third time, Sony is not responsible for third party products. They are not responsible for hyping them, advertising them, testing them or even speaking on behalf of their ownersIn an extremely narrow sense, this is true: since these are independent companies, Sony can in no way be responsible for their actions, the quality of their products etc.

However, the second half of the statement is the definition of suicide in this business. In particular, as one who has been in the software business since 1983: you win by getting industry support; you lose if you don't have it.

The most important thing for a product like Vegas is to have a thriving community of independent software vendors (ISVs, as we used to call them). Why? Because no matter how complete and wonderful your product, there will be dozens -- no, make that hundreds -- of features and capabilities that some sub-section of your market wants, that you can never possibly cram into one product.

All major companies understand this, and not only provide the appropriate APIs (the technical definitions for how to interface to the product) and SDKs (the actual software tools to develop plug-ins), but extensive technical and marketing help. Sony does the first two, but totally fails at the last one. They appear to provide only marginal technical help, and very little marketing assistance.

The good companies provide development seminars; they have a full-time support staff to answer technical questions from developers, not just some conversations in a bar at NAB. The DO provide extensive marketing and sales support, providing catalogs, lists in ads, links on website, prominent booth space at trade shows, space on panels at industry events, and more.

So, yes, ultimately Cineform must make whatever changes are needed in order to make this work. If that is all blink is saying, then we all agree, but that is so obvious as to be a tautology, and he is too smart to be saying only that. Therefore, I think he is saying more than that, namely that Sony really doesn't have ANY responsibility to help them with whatever is keeping them from finishing the job.

And for all the reasons cited above, I totally disagree with that. Sony has a MAJOR responsibility to help these developers, by giving them support, by modifying -- if necessary – the Vegas APIs in order to make things work, and by giving developers enough lead time before a major release so that they can either be ready by release date, or at least have an announcement ready as to their plans for a release.

Given what Dan has said on behalf of Cineform, both recently, and in the past months, it sounds to me like they have come up against some hard stops that they cannot get around without some help from Sony. I've been there myself, and I fully sympathize with their position. They've put a lot of time and effort into supporting Vegas, and they have some portion of their revenue stream tied up in those efforts. If their "host" decides to modify their product in a manner which disables the plugin, but then doesn't provide any help so their developers can upgrade in order to re-establish compatibility, you have the situation we now have where the folks at Cineform are bitter, customers are confused and angry, and Sony in the midst of what appears to be a REALLY GREAT upgrade is getting a backlash from some of its highest-end customers, the ones who need intermediates for color grading, etc.

"So what do we take as intermediary codec ? Why hasn't Sony his own intermediary codec "

Well...maybe because Sony has done its best to support the various formats NATIVELY and there is no REAL need for some sort of custom intermediate?

This is just stupid on the part of SCS. By having customers over the years become dependant on a 3rd party product like this, and then to flush compatibility down the drain, is just plain stupid and moronic. It's actually kind of insane. The profile of customer who will spend extra dollars for Cineform codecs to make their business work is not the kind of person you want to be alienating. Simply a stupid move business wise. I would suggest SCS restore the funtionality to their API post haste, anything else would be just silly.

The 3rd party support for and in this product is already so pathetic why would any company want to make it any worse? Makes no sense at all.

"However, the second half of the statement is the definition of suicide in this business. In particular, as one who has been in the software business since 1983: you win by getting industry support; you lose if you don't have it. "

I doesn't look to me as though Sony is too worried about losing anything. If I was in business like Sony I would do EXACTLY as they have. Why should they spend a thin red dime on anything other than presenting the SDK's. Does Sony get any money from Cineform?

My guess is that Sony already KNOWS they don't have to concern themselves with something that not their pronblem in the first place.... because cineform will do it from their end... as it SHOULD be.

"This is just stupid on the part of SCS. By having customers over the years become dependant on a 3rd party product like this, and then to flush compatibility down the drain,"

JohnM above writes some various scripts for vages and gives them away (bless his soul) but if Sony does something that affects one of his scripts then Sony should call him and together sit down and work it out? Is this what you're saying???

As all formats are supported natively there is perhaps no longer a need to convert files to intermediaries, there you are right. In our case for example, we want to exchange data with other applications, here the deshaker for example. For deshaked files, cineform was nearly perfect, as uncompressed files are too big.

Blink,
I'm hoping this gets back on track quickly to the subject at hand, but I'm intrigued: if the Sony business strategy here is one you view highly, I'd be interested in knowing what sort of business you ARE in... and a couple examples of the business models or leaders whose paradigm you put into practice (besides Sony).

"In our case for example, we want to exchange data with other applications,"

So NOW it's Sony's job to worry about other Apps??? See where this is going? You have to draw the line somewhere... and Sony has drawn the PROPER line in the PROPER place just like any other software company does. When those with Maudio cards were out of the loop with Vista for pretty much a year because they were slow in creating a proper driver... was that Microsoft's fault???

They hand out the SDK's and from there it's up to the third party producer to make their product compatible.

"and a couple examples of the business models or leaders whose paradigm you put into practice (besides Sony)."

Just did.. Microsoft... m audio. It's not Microsoft's job to make sure Maudio stuff works with Vista.... it's the other way around.

Everybody has their job and Sony's job is to worry about Vegas. It's Cineform's job to make sure their product works within Vegas... otherwise cineform loses money.

I don't know why but people here seem to think that Cineform is supporting Vegas. Sorry... it's the other way around.

I use Cineform files extensively for archiving, they are a good balance between image quality and file size. Cineform support in Vegas is absolutely critical to my workflow. I don't care who's responsibility it is, it MUST work. I purchased Neo Scene some time ago and it does not show up in Vegas v9 (32bit). This IS a deal breaker for me and Vegas v9.