I have to wonder why anyone would commit anything important to an unknown piece of software. In my world, we hammer on the software with make-work tasks, just to see if we can make it break. Meanwhile, we keep the important projects in proven environments.

I'm not the first or only one to express this, and it will (same as it ever was) go unheeded.

This is a legitimate point. A lesson learned the hard way.

It's also a good idea to frequent this forum even if all is well with your editing, kind of an early warning system.

I have nothing to offer about this problem except some general advice that has saved my butt a few times. Every few hours I use Save As to save a new version. The first time I save a project, at the very beginning, I name it [project name] 001.veg. Next time I use 002 and so forth. If I work on something for a few weeks I can easily get up to 040 or higher. But veg files are small! And being able to go back to where you were yesterday or last week etc is priceless.

I do the same for music projects in SONAR. One time I was working on a huge music composition over the better part of a year, when I realized one MIDI track had become totally corrupted a few months earlier. It took less than ten minutes to find an earlier version where that track was still correct, and I simply copied that track into the current version.

--Ethan

Every few hours I use Save As to save a new version.

Download the trial of Excalibur for the Autosave feature.
jetdv (Edward Troxel) himself said in the Official now. Serious bug in 9.0a. Take c thread (very last post):

If you don't want to use Excalibur, that's fine. Autosave will continue to work as well as Project Inspector even after Excalibur expires.

Mike

Excellent advice, tiddit, and an approach that I've used for a while after getting burned on new software releases. A more recently adopted approach that I now use is to not buy the new release at all and instead wait until forum comments indicate it is stable. But I do appreciate the early adopters who ferret out the bugs and help get them fixed.

LivingTheDream, I don't get too upset with new feature bugs as I've come to expect a few with any new software release.
What bothers me with most of the 9.0 bugs is that they somehow messed up things that were working perfectly and that's unacceptable.

Mike

if you got vegas soon after you got vista (you said a few years ago), get 7 or 8 back up & running.

i've done searches for copies of vegas 8 & it looks like nobody stocks it any more, which is strange. normally you can still get the previous version (or two) for less, sometimes just Vegas no DVDA.

odoriffus:
At least you found your SAMPLE TEXT before you delivered.
I definitely feel your frustration as I have lost at least 3 days worth of work because of this issue.

This 'little bug' is more like the Bubonic Plague as it's definitely the 'Black Death' of Vegas if it goes unfixed for any length of time.

An FCP editor delivered some P2 footage and asked about the 'Text Issue'.
FCP crashed while Importing the P2 media but NOTHING was lost. All Text and everything else remained in tact. We both agreed... we'd rather have the occasional crash than the constant SAMPLE TEXT.

I haven't spent hours on any project with 9.0a or even 9 for that matter however after reading this - I'll work in 8.1 and 8.0c for my vegas files and only use 9.0a to render or preview more smoothly after saving in 8.0 or 8.1 - seems like the only safe bet for now.

Thanks Ethan. I like your idea and will implement it immediately. By the way I have also been a Sonar user for almost a decade now.

sync2rhythm said

"we'd rather have the occasional crash than the constant SAMPLE TEXT."

Man, I couldn't agree more.

welcome to Sony Vegas. If you have a business that depends on the reliability of Vegas, especially on new releases, I hope you have understanding customers.

Bill - do you hang around on all forums of software you don't choose to use?

Good workaround, Ethan.
I'm disappointed to say that this is the first release (point or otherwise) that didn't get to the beta team prior to public release. Would have loved to have caught this one....It's been painful, but fortunately we back up large projects often.

" . . . that didn't get to the beta team prior to public release" - That's gotta be real tough on the BETA team, who are also reading the complaints about VP9a, with others experiencing these difficulties maybe considering, and surmising, that these issues had gotten through the BETA net.

Grazie

I'm still in awe of anyone who can keep track of 161 megs of code. I can still have fun playing with the blue snaps until 9.0B is released.
JJK

"I have NEVER been so angry..."

I can tell you I have experienced the same reaction to Vegas 9 myself since putting it on a computer with a fresh install of the SO for testing and using purposes.

I've been around a while and installed many NLE systems. The current state of NLE"s is that they are less stable and harder to maintain IMO. Yes, they do more, but at a terrible cost.

Our current state of affairs with NLE's, bugs, workaround, install / deactivate, reinstall, reactivate in this industry makes me sick. Yes I can figure out work arounds, but they take time and energy and besides being tiring, the learning curve is painful.

Gotchas seem to running our lives these days.

I just purchased Neoscene, ( I work by myself and have 3 workstations and a 2 laptops that I honor the vendors licensing agreements on). The number of steps to go through to buy, download, install, activate, deactivate, etc etc etc..... is ridiculous. I currently own the product, have serial and activation numbers but am not able to run it because of activation issues. Have to wait till Monday to find out what I did wrong. Too many steps.

Lately, I have been finding less capable programs to use with simpler licensing agreements that I use because I can maintain and install them without the drama and lost time due to activation issues. I constantly change, update and rebuild my systems, and many activation systems cause delays and extra work to get them up and running again.

I own some programs that the vendor has gone out of business and I can't even install their programs anymore because there is no may to activate them. Pretty sad.

I find John Cline's comments about looking at new solutions interesting as he's been around a while and been very loyal to Vegas and defends Vegas many times when it's getting bashed. He may have written that in a moment of frustration, but frustration builds when all we want to do is edit our footage and we are constantly getting bit in the butt with bugs.

I went to Apple last week to do some timing test with the new FCP. I am considering going back to the Mac for editing.

Got there and found out I'd also have to buy a new laptop cause FCP won't install without a dedicated graphics chip and my macbook doesn't have one. Also, to my dismay, they hadn't loaded up FCP yet, so I wasted more time and left more frustrated. I don't have the money to spend on a full FCP system, but I'm still considering it because of the sorry state of affairs with my Vegas setups.

We can make almost anything work, but who wants to put all the effort into maintaining a list of bugs to avoid. Nothing is more frustrating than having put in time on a project and having your program become corrupted. Redo's introduce more chances for mistakes. More mistakes, more time, more missed deadlines, etc...

For all the good things that Vegas has, the damage being done by number of issues that have to be worked around and the increased number of crashes, in my mind, is driving more people to look elsewhere. V9 might end accelerating the number of people who look elsewhere.

Frustrated and Angry. That pretty much sums it up. Sony, can you hear us?

I think people have to start talking to SCS with their wallets, that's the only language they will understand. When 9 came out, Vegas fans became all excited and fell for the $50 discount crap without even testing it for a few days. I was also excited and very willing to spend the money, but then I tested it for a week and I saw that it was a piece of junk with new features. So I kept my money, and I keep doing my work in 8.0c, which has its share of bugs, but compared to 9.0a is fantastic.

It's very disappointing because I still prefer the Vegas interface to that of FCP or Premiere, but given the poor effort that SCS is doing in making Vegas a really professional NLE I think that I will start saving long and hard to at some point shell out $3500 in a state of the art Mac Pro and another $1000 for Final Cut Studio, because Vegas looks like a dead end as of now, then Premiere is OK but is rather simple compared to Vegas and FCP, and at least FCP is rather stable and has a ton of features as opposed to Premiere. It comes with a large price tag because you also need to buy the expensive Mac, but if you can put it to good use it's really worth it. I would prefer not to, since I'm far from being an Apple fan, I've had three Macs over the years and they are not as perfect as most people think, and Apple is pretty arrogant as a company, but at least for now they have the best NLE.

"I have to wonder why anyone would commit anything important to an unknown piece of software."


Agreed
While some parts of V9 have been disappointing (and have held me up as well), I can't sympathize with some one angry and on a wild dead line who decides to switch software midstream on such an important project. This didn't make sense to me yesterday and it won't tomorrow.

Good policy Ethan,

I've tweaked it a bit with the notion that as you complete functions or actions that you would rather not do over again, save what you have at that point ... much the same advice I give people with Photoshop; when you get to a point that you would rather not have to do over, save it.
You are correct about the veg files not being that large - so several dozen might not cost more than a MB of space...
So, if you get to a point where you're satisfied with the work and would rather not do it again, save!
And then. . . I would add that if you're building something you feel like you might use again in other projects. . . create a loop region and render it by itself ... maybe create a renders for later use bin where you can stash pieces of projects you create that might just come in later (for highlights, bloopers, advertising, etc). In that way, if you decide in a few months to create a new advertising commercial, all the pieces for a good beginning are right there in that one folder; rendered and waiting to get involved... hahahah...
_ _ _
Understood... many don't have time to stop in the middle of a project to render something they might use down the road... it's just a suggestion, not a law... (wink)
_ _ _
Until that time. . . Earl J.

when version a came out I can see how some would dive in a project , I mean how long is a person suppose to wait , till 10 comes out then its safe to run 9 ? its a total srew up, and the sony silence makes it worse, I feel sorry for those who gave their money in this economy to a group releasing this product with such horrible support and customer service.