Timing was bad for me - I was in the middle of a large project in V8 which uses mainly the Client's own AVCHD footage, which I normally wouldn't choose to touch (yet ...). I began getting lots of problems in V8, including red frames and general flakiness. V9 came along, I jumped straight in and the same project began behaving itself. I was lured by the impressive list of fixes in 9.0a and upgraded - without problems for a few days, then I had a single text event revert to its original saved preset, and red thumbnails in timeline and preview began to appear - probably connected with memory usage, but I can't be sure about this.

I've currently rolled back to 9.0 and it's going ok at present, but I'd love the fix(es) to arrive before too long.

What's bugging me is the reponse to this issue. Sticking their heads in the sand is only making it worse but this seems to be part of the corporate matra. I haven't been bitten by this bug but twice in the past I've reported serious issues that impacted my relationship with my client and hence my income. After jumping through all the hoops to finally get someone to look at the problems and then to be told they were already aware of the problem did nothing to inspire confidence.
How many more Vegas users are going to get a rude shock when their hard work goes south. How much more pissed off are they going to be when they learn it's been a known problem for quite some time.
This issue can be fixed immediately, SCS have the capacity to email every registered user advising them of the issue. By the time users come here or file a trouble ticket it is too late, the damage is done.

Bob.

IMO, the only way SCS can actually fix most of the more serious errors is to significantly ramp up their testing. Every other large software company I am familiar with has substantial beta programs with participation from a fairly large percentageof the user base. Typically, private forums are used to report and discuss findings.

Admittedly, I don't know the specifics of SCS beta testing, but the little I have heard sounds more like what other company's would call alpha testing among a small group of expert users.

That the Sample Text problem didn't show up in testing speaks volumes about the ineffectiveness of their beta testing program.

Jerry

sony Vegas\madison need to be patient ,fix all the errors before releasing 9.0b

Or, SCS could have a "Known Issues" page on this site for each product/version, with status and workarounds (if any). I definitely agree with your point that every day SCS remains silent about this just further stresses the relationship with their customers. I can't believe there hasn't been a SCS posting here about the problem.

Jerry

This issue can be fixed immediately, SCS have the capacity to email every registered user advising them of the issue. By the time users come here or file a trouble ticket it is too late, the damage is done.

Geeez...

Are we getting tired of these doomsday threads yet???

Who said Sony is burying the head in the sand??? Last I saw SCS came out with an absolute BOATLOAD of fixes in 9a and tradition states that they'll come up with yet another patch (even 2.... AS TRADITION STATES) to clean up what they have missed. This isn't exactly "burying the head in the sand"

From the other doomsday thread we have deduced that SCS is no better... OR WORSE than the others in terms of bugs. I do know for a fact though that they're much faster than avid anyway, at fixing them.

SCS remains as silent... and loud as all the rest of them.... and YOU towards your clients. Why should there be a "SCS posting" about anything??? This is a peer forum... there is plenty of response if you contact SCS through the PROPER channels

Honestly... the rather childish dramatics floating around here is really too thick to believe!

Geeez----Doomsdays--- ;-) For the newbies----- Lets "demand" a big doomsday countdown Clock for between "autosaves" at the top of Vegas' screen. The "clock" count down value could be adjustable, plus have a feature that "autosaves" after a specific number of "actions"---- for the truly fast editors ( my turtle speed is no threat here). ;-) Maybe an auto "bitch" button too, that will transmit the last keystokes and user "issues" ;-) We can name this feature "B.Ex"..............

i agree,lets just let them get on with it,maybe we dont hear anything because they are working on fixing the problems,do we really need a progress report on these "i think not " all the other nle's have thier own problems and take ages to get fixes for.

. do know for a fact though that they're much faster than avid anyway, at fixing them.

scs got 9a out at record speed and ok its got its problems but the list of fixes was huge and yes you could say they should of held back with 9 but we live in a world where things move on or you get forgotton about ,we had adobe letting cs4 go so sony kinda had get 9 out to keep up with jones so to speak,and cs4 has plenty bugs,
so lets just see,and let scs get on with fixing things.

"...substantial beta programs with participation from a fairly large percentage of the user base ... private forums ... Known Issues page. "

Exactly.

Just to head off the posse at the pass and in fairness to the underpaid beta testers. V9.0a was not beta tested. Please lay off the beta testers, they do a very good job. They are not salaried professional software test engineers.

Bob.

These problems remind me of issues my co-worker (an audio engineer) had a few years ago when he was running Logic Audio on a PC.
He upgraded to (as I recall) version 5 when it came out and then had to wait almost a year and numerous bug fixes (monthly if not more often) before it was stable enough to use :-(
9.0 has only been out for a few months and I have faith that SCS will get their act together soon and give us what we expected to get in the first place.

Mike

I think with NLEs, Beta testing is better done with editors and editors unique habits ;-) software engineers can suggest certain patterns or combinations of use, but testing needs "field testing", especially with products like VEGAS that are hardware independent. BUT in house testing should have a "big" list of keystrokes apps run vegas thru its' features before going "BETA". Of course, a fast way to install 3nd parties apps would speed testing of each re-version...... ;]) that was a hint SCS for joy-joy for testers and developers...maybe, maybe not...... ;-)

As Bob mentioned...9a was not beta tested. I was stunned to see 9a show up on the top of this forum one day, particularly as we were in stages of the Vegas 9 book and *thought* we knew the release schedule for the update.
The text bug doubtlessly would have been immediately discovered had it been sent to the beta team. Imagine a training project started in 9 that has over 400 title events, opening up in 9a, hit CTRL+Z to undo an edit, and watch all the title events disappear...
From emails and phone calls, I can assure you that this has a couple people on the dev team working overtime to find the root cause so they can fix it ASAP.
Contrary to popular belief, the engineering team really, truly care about Vegas, the people that use it, and what it is that they bring to the table.

Thanks Spot!

It just feels good to know that the dev team is working overtime in order to find a fix!

Rob

Thanks for your insights Spot - the constant negative banter on these forums gets tedious anymore.

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt

I would be scared of 90.B---3D, holographic, 1500K resolution, mind control (no keyboard), anticipitory editing interface, fully automatic editing, auto color control, sporadic anticipitory transition implimintation, 800 core rendering, complete automatic photo/rotoscoping on the fly, 3-part technicolor implemintation, 100 teribyte solid state hard drives, parallel/quad/omini-directional stacked operating systems modelled after the DNA chain, and 100 teribyte memory sticks.
JJK

I would be scared of 90.B...

ROTFLMAO

Mike

....and BTW Spot how are you getting along.....?

What seems to be needed is a communications path from the development team management to the customer population in total, or at least the subset thereof that expresses interest, to convey information about development status, bug lists, or whatever. I think I hear clearly, especially from certain members here, that this forum is strictly peer-to-peer. I think I also understand that the technical support submission process is strictly one-to-one between tech support and a particular customer.

Spot seems to occasionally serve as such a communications pathway, informally I suppose. Is there no such formal communication mechanism in place? It seems to me that this missing communications seems to be a source of some of the problems, or at least frustrations, in this community.

Great to hear that the SCS team is working hard to fix this undo bug. I had just the pure luck to read about it here, hours before I progably would have been bitten, and badly. Grateful for this forum and to its contrubutors!

But the question remains - WHY was VP9a rushed out - WITHOUT beta testing?

What made this release so urgent that it SCS decided not to run it via beta testing?

Hopefully this teaches a lesson to all of us - including SCS.

Christian

[edit:] And thanks to Spot for filling in as the "missing" information channel. Hope that your recovery is in a good path!

don't be confused with negative banter and legitimate concern
the majority of folks on this forum enjoy and work with Vagas professionally every day..I DO

its about TRUST ....if i load the update i trust that it is good
9.0a has things wrong that 9.0 had right
i made a professional mistake by blindly assuming everything was hundreds ..that was my mistake, not Sony Vegas...many others made the same mistake and paid for it...on the next major release i will wait for feedback from this forum before jumping on board

this is a public forum if we only allowed people to say the positive then that would be dishonest and we would all be a bunch of hypocrites, the fact that we have a balance between good comments and bad shows that this is a very good forum

"its about TRUST"------- I believe that history has shown that " Trust but verify!" is the better choice. That's why most companies have trial periods( laws help too). Updates are an unique problem when not approached cautiously, no excuse for bad programming, but big projects' safety usually demands a careful approach, regardless of product being used or tested.

Updates are an unique problem when not approached cautiously, no excuse for bad programming, but big projects' safety usually demands a careful approach, regardless of product being used or tested.

Jeez - I can't recall a better reason to have a public beta program that this debacle of a release. Now that it's all been confirmed that 9.0a was NOT even beta tested - what the hell is SCS thinking? How do you justify releasing a major update to a major program without some major league testing?

And no disrespect to those that are the "hidden" testers...but there is no way possible to try and suss out bugs in something this large if it is not put thru it's paces in real world situations by a very large group of real users.

While not even close to being in the same league - look at Windows 7 - easily the largest "trial" version of any software ever released. Hundreds of thousands of folks poking it and prodding it thru the beta and the RC HAD to contribute in some meaningful way to it's rock solid consistency upon RTM. I have never ever experienced an OS release that is so solid and robust.

Whatever "old school" manager is running dev over there at SCS - needs to take a good long hard look at changing the way this stuff is tested. Get us involved in "some" way because the 9.0a issues are a prime example of a bunch of folks sleeping at the switch.

VP