As one who is frustrated and pretty fed up with the current state, me thinks it's not much better elsewhere.

Went to the cow and read a long thread about FCP which is similar to many postings here when a new version comes out. Examples, it's a .5 upgrade, this is stupid, it doesn't work, why didn't they wait for 64bit to come out, hand writing is on the wall Apple is not putting effort into it cause the pro market is too small and not worth their effort, this doesn't work, it's stupid, etc etc etc.

Then listen to everyone talk about Adobe's products being buggy, (I haven't updated much of their stuff as it's getting too bloated and their activation has caused me problems so I quit buying their stuff). Avid is never a consideration because of costs, AVIO I watch but never consider as I've a history of their stuff sort of working, but its takes a lot of effort and knowledge for do's and don'ts.

Guess I'll head over to the Media 100 forums and look at them. In their day, they were the best working system out of the box. Not sure what they are currently, but I don' hear a lot of rumblings about problems. Not sure how big their market sizie is anymore.

Unfortunately it seems to be a reflection of what's going on in the world. Everything is getting harder and sort of going to crap. There are not a lot of good options out there.

Wouldn't it be great if Sony figured this out and put a real beta program together for their next release (kind of like Microsoft did with Win 7). I am running Win 7 on 3 of my 6 machines right now and damn if they aren't running good. I'm all XP and OSX. My macbook is not supported on Win 7 and I've had to figure it out myself. Proof is in the pudding, the last 4 weeks, OS X has only been running about 5% of the time.

I've pre-ordered 6 copies of Win 7 at reduced prices. Not unhappy with XP, just want some of the new features and more speed. Sort of the same reasons we jump on Vegas upgrades too soon. With hd, render times are way too long and anytime we can speed it up, that's very desirable. Between that and new features, it's not hard to want to try the updates before their ready.

Not sure how hard it would be for Sony to put a release candidate program out there for 3-6 months before releasing it. A good web page, 1 person monitoring it and a weekly or bi weekly meeting with the developing team and 1 good person to try to mimic the problems internally. What's so hard about that?

Precisely!

A Windows 7-like Beta plus a RC1-period is what Vegas needs for V10.0.

Vegas is such a great product, and it really does not deserve beeing (pre-)sold and delivered only half finished.

this.

I can kill two birds with one stone: at one point Dreamweaver (in it's VERY early days, version 4 I believe) had a bug where there was an autosave...except it didn't). And neither did the save-as. Only SAVE worked. It was ironed out airly quickly, but my favourite was always Hot Dog Professional (hail to the Aussies!) before they shut down.

I totally agree with quoka on incremental saves...it NEEDS to be there in Vegas, it's just such a no-brainer for project work. I also agree that not having it isn't an excuse not to do it manually.

Today is an exciting day...I'm picking up the parts to build a new i7 quad 12GB 64-bit editing system. Dual monitor (via an ATI 4870), and backup via Drobo and BD. And yes, the system will get 8c and 9.0, but only AFTER a couple of weeks of testing, and burn-in (those who think new systems don't need burn in, have never run a full CPU memory check and found errors in either or both).

I think, one day soon, the "Vegas is killin' me" threads like this will give way to "I bought a solid-state drive and it died on me" threads. I'm very excited about SSD and their potential for a massive reduction in slow physical read/write (but not compared to the old Seagate ST225 drives :-) but the excitement is tempered by the standard corollary: faster means EVERYTHING faster, including read/write, productivity, crashes, lockups, etc etc.

What was it Roseanne Rosanna Danna said, "If it's not one thing, it's another thing."

Ooh...and yes, a beta with RC-1 would be outstanding! Then people would KNOW they're playing with fire...maybe.

Yes it is a bug, SCS does not deny it.

However I have yet to see a BIGGER storm in a tea cup as has been made of this bug.

I use Vista 64-bit and have both V9a 32-bit and V9a 64-bit installed, the only reason why I have V9a 32-bit installed is because 64 bit drivers for my Blackmagic card is not available. I've started out with Vegas 7 a number of years ago and updated/upgraded as soon as a new release was available.

Thus far I have edited SD, HDV and HD XDCAM without any hassles using either the 32 bit or 64 bit V9a versions except for the bug above WHEN ONE COPY AND PASTES WITHOUT SAVING ONE'S PROJECT BEFORE CLOSING IT.

A couple of weeks prior to the release of V9a a assisted a production house to move from Avid to V9 and 2 "indies" to move from Adobe CS4 to Vegas 9. None of them regret it thus far and were in the midst of projects and deadlines.

I had been in the IT industry for 28 years and had been responsible for the development and implementation of large multi-platform systems used by international organisations prior to persuing my passion and hobby full time, thus I think I know what I am talking about.

It is one's own responsibility to adopt a style or approach to ensure that data or work is not lost, there are multiple other reasons or failures that could have resulted in one losing all one's work, whose to blame then??

I'm not a professional, although I would like to make it big in web video some day. This is a hobby for me, so spending this much money on software is a big deal.

I think it's inevitable t hat there are bugs in any software release; but I could live with a few small things. The bottom line is that I wanted to be more creative with my videos so I upgraded from Vegas Movie Studio--I expected that since the preceding releases opened all my video files that Vegas Pro 9 would too; well I was wrong and this version makes it nearly impossible to edit AVCHD footage from my Canon HF 10 because the playback is so poor. I'm hoping that this improves, but I'm not holding my breath because it is a "consumer" video file format.

Veags Movie Studio Platinum Pro 9 allowed me to edit all my footage from all my diferent cameras with little difficulties. I just had a hard drive failure and had to reinstall Windows. I'm debating if I even want to try Vegas Pro 9 until it's patched again.

a possibly interesting Ubuntu option for video editing is available from [linkwww.bagside.com]. I'm writing this on one of the virtual appliances, Firefox running on Ubuntu that is running as a virtual machine (VMware) inside of Windows. All is free. I use it to browse the web in order to avoid malware.

Probably the most appealing of the appliances for video editors is the Ubuntu Studio 9.04. I haven't tried it yet, but will soon. If you want to try it, go to the link above, then click on "Bagvapp Virtual Appliances" (in the "Site Menu" column), then click "Appliances available for download" (so sorry - he doesn't allow direct links - hence all the clicking).

You'll also need the latest (also free) version of VMware Player. Once installed, just click on the .VMX file of the appliance that you downloaded and it will open without further bother.

All appliances allow copy-to-clipboard for pasting into a windows app from any Ubuntu app, or drag-n-drop files from Ubuntu to Win and vice-versa; and other loved details. All appliances also include VMware tools so that you can re-size the virtual machine window to any size that you prefer.

I've also made a contribution so that I can download their Win7 RC-32-bit appliance. I haven't done much with it, but it seems pretty nice. I may use it within the 64-bit Win7 when it comes out in Oct. - just to run apps that won't run in the 64-bit OS (you can adjust the ram in the appliance to utilize as much ram as a 32-bit app can utilize - I plan to have at least 8 GB for Win7 64, so I can use up to the ~3 GB 32-bit limit for 32-bit apps)

All-in-all, some pretty interesting stuff there that might be of interest to video editors.

I have a SONY HDR-HC9 which is an HDV camcorder, and my handy back up / camera 2 in a pinch. The reason I have that particular camera is because its predecessor, an HDR-CX7, used AVCHD. I have a 3GHz i7, 12GB of RAM and endless doodads and whatsits on my system. AVCHD still chugs along. Don't blame Vegas Pro 9 for a problem that lies within a format. AVCHD was developed to allow HD video to go onto memory sticks and hard-drives.

AVCHD requires several times the computing power of HDV because, where HDV compresses each frame of video individually, so playback is played back individually, AVCHD compresses each frame relative to surrounding frames of video, so playback is based on surrounding data.

Think of it this way: when you play back one frame of HDV, you are uncompressing one frame of data. When you play back one frame of AVCHD, you're uncompressing 5 or 6 frames of data. It's a format problem, not a problem with Vegas. You're going to get that same "chug chug chug, I think I can, I think I can" behaviour with AVCHD, no matter what editor you use.

"AVCHD requires several times the computing power of HDV because, where HDV compresses each frame of video individually, so playback is played back individually, AVCHD compresses each frame relative to surrounding frames of video, so playback is based on surrounding data."

You are incorrect. There are a lot of video codecs where each frame stands alone, DV or Cineform being two of them. However, HDV and AVCHD are both based on inter-frame compression using "groups of pictures" and are much more alike than they are different.

agree incremental save feature would be a big time saver... for now I'm just still using V8 because I can't migrate all my dozens of custom render settings to V9 ... I hope they'll fix that, it took me a lot of time to create them...

-k

What bothers me the most is Vegas 8 wasn't even 100% stable at the release of 9. 9 is by far I think the worst release to date for stability (I've been using it since 4). I would expect some minor bugs or instability, but the text and many other issues we've experienced are just not acceptable.

I don't agree it should take 3 or 4 revisions to have something stable, that's insane... This is supposed to be a PROFESSIONAL piece of software, and at the rate Sony has been releasing updates 9.0d should arrive sometime in 2010. We mistakeningly decided for the first time to dive in to 9.0 and do some serious work with it, and what a mistake. We've never done that in the past, and now we're about 300hrs into a project that can no longer find half of the clips in the timeline. Even though they're THERE, you can open them in the trimmer, it just decides it no longer wants to show them in the project. And this has been happening at random on various projects...

Totally unacceptable... if you are working in this industry professionally, you need tools you can rely on. If you're working for money, it's always last minute, high pressure deadlines and you need software and tools that can stand up in that environment. I get it - it's complicated. But we've got plenty of equally complex software that doesn't have this level of issue out of the box.

I love Vegas, I really do, but man I have to say that as the new versions come out I get increasingly more dissapointed (first it was dropping Black Magic support, unannounced - we waited with baited breath throughout 8.0, and finally BMD gave up - and it never really worked 100% from the get-go), and for the first time in 5 years we're seriously looking at dumping everything and going to another platform. Plus it took what, 2 years for Vegas 9 to come out? I was expecting a hell of a lot more in terms of improvement and features for that length of development time - not riddled with bugs and problems and a handful of useful features. And I've bitched about this before, still no proper 3rd party hardware support...

It's a shame that Sony really didn't do much beta testing for the 9.0 release of Vegas. There's really no excuse for sloppy software engineering and poor testing. Having been the CEO of several software companies, I learned first hand that rushing a release out before it's ready and tested will always bite you in the end. It simply isn't worth it. Haven't once, never happened again.

However, nobody should jump on a new major release of ANY software product (from any manufacturer) that could affect your livelihood or cause major disruptions to your business; that's simply nuts. To be excited about a new release and want to buy it right away is OK, just don't put yourself in a position of causing yourself major heartburn. That goes for whether it's the operating system, video editing software, or a major patch. When it comes to software, it's always better to deal with the devil you know when you're under deadlines.

I feel bad for everyone who's lost tons of time having to rework projects because of the products bugs. And I do understand you it's legitimate not to expect something as basic as generated text to have the bugs that have manifested themselves in 9.0 and 9.0a.

It is a shame - and I agree, you shouldn't dive in blind. But at what point do you buy in? Like I said - there are still minor bugs in 8.0 that aren't resolved in 9.0. When I look at a piece of software and I see version 9 - and you look at the feature list, and what's new etc. it's not earth shattering... It's not version 1.0, it's not a brand-new-ground-up program, it's not Ultra-Vegas-Premium 1.0. It's Vegas 8, with a new interface and a half-dozen new features. How the hell did it get so messy?

We just figured out what happened to the project that went tits-up today. ALL of the Vegas generated media - solid colors and text - just vanished from the project. So it's not JUST the text tool, it looks like ANY of the generated media can vanish on you...

I generally expect new features, radical features, to be buggy... an entirely new text generator (like the Pro Type Titler, which is finally stable) but for crying-out-loud the freakin' media generators have been around since DAY ONE, how do you f-that up?

Anyway... enough ranting, back to work... have to replace 54 pieces of missing generated media and re-render before tomorrow AM.

God forbid that SCS would make a human mistake.

The whining on this thread compels me to ask:

"You want some cheese with that Whine?"

Let it go guys. Spot has said (and he would know) that SCS is working OT to get this issue resolved. What else do you want???

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt

Let it go guys. Spot has said (and he would know) that SCS is working OT to get this issue resolved. What else do you want???

What we want is for SCS to properly test their software for bugs BEFORE it's released to the public, not to release a quarter assed job (because this is clearly worse than a half assed job), make a lot of people waste a lot of time, and then put just a couple of people in their time on OT to try to fix it. If it's not ready, don't release it, it's as simple as that.

All the people that post comments like "You want some cheese with that Whine?" only make them think that their kind of mediocre policy of poor testing and poor quality control is OK. Human mistakes are one thing, but the bugs that show up the most in Vegas, any version of it, are easy to spot after a few hours of editing, they are not bugs that show up after days of constant editing and only in very specific situations. It's unforgivable that SCS will not address those bugs, that 8.0c was released almost a year ago and it's still buggy but there haven't been any new updates, 8.1 was released I believe about a year ago, and there haven't been even a 8.1a update to address the most serious bugs, and 9 is a joke.

This company has an NLE that despite a few design flaws, has the potential to be far better than Premiere and FCP, but they ruin it by not testing it properly and rushing releases that should be tested properly and for as long as necessary.

I'm glad that SCS is working on the text and rotation blur problem so in the meantime, I'll just use a 3d app for titles with alpha channel as a work around. Not really a show stopper here.

"What else do you want???"

Mate, I want the complaining to stop. I know the SCS guys are working on it as fast as they can type and late into the night. I never questioned that. I sure wish people would have the common sense to not commit paying jobs to unproven code, it's as nuts as learning how to use a new camera on a paying job.

But here we are, people do what people do. I suspect part of the issue was it took so long for V9 to arrive and I think a lot of people were hoping for less bugs and less features.

Stopping the complaining isn't hard as I pointed out above, send out an email. That'd go a long way to stop the whining. Then the pressure is off the developers and the testers to calmly huddle down and do the job right. At the moment every days delay brings another user with problems to here. That probably equates to 10 times that number in the real world. Given how fast bad news spreads that's a lot of negative press. Everyone here talks about all the problems with other NLEs, that's a good example of what I'm talking about, this bad news has got to be spreading just as fast.

Bob.

Well said Robert.

Grazie

"Mate, I want the complaining to stop. I know the SCS guys are working on it as fast as they can type and late into the night. I never questioned that. I sure wish people would have the common sense to not commit paying jobs to unproven code, it's as nuts as learning how to use a new camera on a paying job.

But here we are, people do what people do. I suspect part of the issue was it took so long for V9 to arrive and I think a lot of people were hoping for less bugs and less features.

Stopping the complaining isn't hard as I pointed out above, send out an email. That'd go a long way to stop the whining. Then the pressure is off the developers and the testers to calmly huddle down and do the job right. At the moment every days delay brings another user with problems to here. That probably equates to 10 times that number in the real world. Given how fast bad news spreads that's a lot of negative press. Everyone here talks about all the problems with other NLEs, that's a good example of what I'm talking about, this bad news has got to be spreading just as fast.

Bob. "

If Vegas was freeware you are correct but people put down their hard earned money in these hard economic times deserve a product that works. Unproven code I can see your point if he was using a beta, he wasnt he was using a version sony sold as done.

i agree, tonyalt. i've observed the bug but haven't been bitten cause i ctrl-s religiously.

what irks me is the response from scs: none. i'm sure they're working on it. and i'm sure they're aware of the gist of what's being said in this forum. now it's a pr issue as well as a bug issue.

i would feel more confident in scs if they posted a message here apologizing to their user community for rushing out an update without proper testing, insuring us that they are revising their release strategy to avoid such a debacle going forward, and will release a patch as soon as it is properly tested. it's the least they can do, so why don't they?

"I sure wish people would have the common sense to not commit paying jobs to unproven code"

So, if everybody waited who, then, would prove the code OK for everyone else to join in?

I think it is reasonable to expect that a product which has been released by a major company, complete with marketing hype, magazine reviews, etc. should be usable for the purposes stated. If there is a showstopper bug such as the text one, it should be corrected and a patch made available within a week.

I retired from a major media measurement company where I wrote code for 15 years on all types of systems. If we put out a show stopper no one would go home until a patch was made available!

Most all software companies have cut costs by outsourcing (a serious QC hit), heavy reliance on automated testing (which at best is basically useless!), and head count reduction with the most talented (highest paid) replaced by lower paid and less talented offshore workers.

My guess is that SCS has lost control of source code version control discipline which is often the case when a company tries too hard at cost cutting at the expense of quality.

I do not see why customers should not demand a quick fix for the text problem... this is not a trivial matter!

I've continued using v8.0c for my paying gigs and will for the forseeable future. In playing with v9.0a, I have been bitten by the text bug and neither v9 or v9.0a will load the audio stream of any HDV or TS file which has been processed through external programs like MPEG2REPAIR. This makes v9 absolutely useless to me.