Heroglyph has NO customer service

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/11/2007, 8:07 AM

After reading so much praise about this product in this forum I couldn't resist and had to look into it myself. I purchased the software proper (Heroglyph 2.5) with no problems and installed.

However, I did not find it as intuitive as others reported here so I purchased their Training package # 1 which they give an impressive sample of on their website. When opening and installing this package, all seemed to go routinely well, including the dialogue box saying that the install was successful -- except that it wasn't. Nothing shows up.

Heroglyph also cannot be used "natively" with Vegas as one would expect from the list of software the company lists. Only after purchasing the software you are told that this is because Vegas does not permit this at the moment but hopefully soon will.

Has anyone here had any personal exchange of e-mail with these people??? I strongly doubt it and find it mindlessly infuriating and positively futile. All I ever get is a surge of automated replies which are meaningless and do not generate any further real contact with Pro-DAD.

Buyer beware! Purchase products from these people at your own risk and don't expect a reply if you end up unsatisfied and attempt to communicate with customer service -- they have NONE (unless someone here can document the opposite with a better experience).

EDIT: I will copy this post and forward to Pro Dad. Stay tuned....

Comments

UKAndrewC wrote on 7/11/2007, 10:00 AM

When I first purchased it, I had a few problems (mainly things I didn't understand) and they where very quick and helpful

Andrew

MarkWWW wrote on 7/11/2007, 11:14 AM

I notice that you say you are using V.2.5 and that the website says you need V.2.6 or higher for the add-ons like your Training Package.

I'd guess you just need to apply the free update to get to V.2.6 and then try it again.

Mark

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/11/2007, 11:44 AM

Mark, this is a mistake I made in my first post. The software I am missing is the Heroglyph training package #1 2.5. I had no problem installing Heroglyph 2.6. I followed the same procedure to install the training package, which never shows up after "installing successfully"
.
This package is offered also for a trial download to those who have installed the Heroglyph trial version, which I downloaded on another one of my computers. The Training Package failed to show up there as well. To me it seems to be clearly a bug with the installation software of the Training Package which I wish someone from proDAD would explain to me, particularly since I had to pay for it in good faith.

What is disappointing to me is that since I sent them a copy of this post this morning I still haven't heard from the company, although there is one change; this time I never got the automated reply.

The price of the program is very small... it's the frustration factor I could do without. Does anyone here have the training program? From the demo on their website it looks like it's put together very well.

DGrob wrote on 7/11/2007, 4:26 PM

Vegas 7e, Heroglyph 2.6.*

Hero shows up in my Vegas "Media Generators" tab and drops a default event onto my timeline. The Training Package shows up in the Heroglyph "Start" page by clicking on ?Workshops at the bottom of the left menu list.

I've worked thru it, kinda learn by doing approach. Overall, I'm fairly happy. Not had to access proDAD Help directly. You can get some great stuff out of it, as a plug-in with Vegas, not bad.

Darryl

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/12/2007, 1:53 AM

Wow, many thanks, Darryl. Too bad proDAD isn't as responsive. A simple read me file would have done the trick.

So please tell me how you make the current Vegas event show up in Hero so One can type titles and compose them around the scene. I knew about Hero's appearance in the Media Generator, but when I drag the default icon on a layer above my clip, all it does is open Hero as a new application while Vegas' GUI disappears.

How do I get the scene I want to create titles over appear in Hero?

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/12/2007, 3:12 AM

I see the following statement from proDAD as the crucial drawback of this software for Vegas users. I believe it would have been helpful of proDAD to have posted this warning directly next to the Vegas plugin on their website so that a prospective buyer would be sufficiently forewarned before proceeding:

1. At present, it is not possible to transmit a video signal from VEGAS to Heroglyph, but this is surely to appear in a modification of the API in a later version of Vegas.
2. while Heroglyph is opened VEGAS is blocked/can not be used.

For me this makes Heroglyph as cumbersome to use as Boris Graffiti. Any application that asks me to work off the NLE timeline is not a real video titler. I can do all of this in Mirage and better but Mirage at least doesn't bill itself to be a character generated which interacts with any NLE timeline.

Oh well, back to the Vegas native titler -- in my opinion still the best, simplest, and single way to interactively create film credits, supers etc.on top of image events directly within the timeline.

jday wrote on 7/12/2007, 5:25 AM

Paul, when you finish with your title in Heroglyph press the F12 key and that closes Heroglyph and returns you to Vegas with the effect entered. I agree that there isn't much in the way of help on this and the first time I used the Heroglyph plugin I was surprised that Vegas "appeared" to close.

That said, I've been a user of the Heroglyph standalone program for a couple of years and like its abilities, but have never liked the interface.

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/12/2007, 5:54 AM

I think my main problem with finding the ideal title maker is that I never ever have the need to create something standalonish. All I need is to compose type against scenery. This is tricky business because scenes tend to be in motion and my titles tend to be static, therefore I need to do a lot of tweaking and nudging of positions and colors so how can I do this off Vegas?

But I also am arriving at the conclusion that the Vegas native titler is getting a bum rap; it's GUI is unassuming but its performance is clearly underrated on this forum -- the little program covers a lot of ground when it comes strictly to film/video titles, which it's name promises.

My mistake seems to be that I have been expecting too much of these fancy graphics program that are clearly designed for those who want to create elaborate, standalone title animation events -- a show on its own with little relationship to preexisting scenes.

All my scenes are animations -- my titles need to be done so that they won't clash with those, yet might stretch over a number of events, in essence just the opposite of what standalone programs are primarily designed for.

farss wrote on 7/12/2007, 6:13 AM

Paul,
from what I can work out the problem isn't with the 3rd party apps, the problem is with Vegas. I'm pretty certain there's quite a few developers who would love to provide their plugins to do what you want inside Vegas, the problem is that Vegas is exceptional in that it doesn't allow any 3rd party developer to do this.
Apart from that I'm largely with you, for basic text Vegas has got the job done. For anything more complex / fancier / better quality then you're in the domain of complex and expensive applications such as AE, Mirage etc.

Bob.

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/12/2007, 7:07 AM

Vegas is exceptional in that it doesn't allow any 3rd party developer to do this.

Bob, is this by design or just indifference?

farss wrote on 7/12/2007, 8:30 AM

I really don't have any insight into the why of it.
It's been complained about enough as have many things to do with this area and there's never been any response from the developers.

Bob.

ken c wrote on 7/12/2007, 8:56 AM

How do other NLEs like Premiere Pro and FCP do in this regards, re do they have good titlers built-in, and/or are there good plugins /3rd party programs for titling from within those NLEs?

thx,

k

Tech Diver wrote on 7/12/2007, 9:29 AM

I really like Vegas, but my one major complaint is that it only serves up ONE frame at a time to 3rd-party plugins. For someone like myself who uses Boris Red, there are many functions of Red that I can not use without first rendering a small clip that I subsequently import within Boris.

Although I have learned to live with this, I am waiting for the day when Vegas can serve up clips instead of frames so we can have true plugin integration.

Paul, I know the sort of video work that you do and I fully understand your frustration. Best regards, Peter

Paul Fierlinger wrote on 7/12/2007, 11:33 AM

How do other NLEs like Premiere Pro and FCP do in this regards, re do they have good titlers built-in, and/or are there good plugins /3rd party programs for titling from within those NLEs?

Before Vegas I worked with DPS Velocity. They were bundled with Cayman Graphics Power CG and when I opened Power CG it automatically opened up showing in its project window the current clip. The size of the window was the same as in Velocity and after closing, the title was in place.

DGrob wrote on 7/13/2007, 6:12 PM

Yeah, I worked with Cayman Graphics Power CG for a while as well. But when I went to their HDV Beta, I began to experience problems within Vegas as a plug-in. Shortly thereafter Cayman politely bowed out and dropped support for the Vegas Plug-in. I uninstalled the program and never looked back. It's a shame. It really was a powerful text generator.

Darryl

Laurence wrote on 7/13/2007, 6:33 PM

After trying Cayman, Graffiti and Heroglyph, Heroglyph is by far the easiest and most practical of the three. I got good service from Prodad when I contacted their tech support. My only complaint is that you need to by a second licence (at a reduced rate) for a second computer like a laptop.