is everybody happy?

ushere wrote on 5/24/2008, 6:23 AM
curiosity,

there's very little rants, out right threats of jumping ship, or mention of the unmentionable (black holes, glitches, et al).

have we come to terms with the shortcomings, awaiting the next release, found work arounds, simply to busy to worry, or all of them together?

i still think vegas is the bee's knees (wish i knew where that saying came from), even with the few outstanding warts.....

leslie

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/24/2008, 6:41 AM
due to high gas prices and a lackluster economy people here can't afford to complain.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D

i'm only kidding.... i don't find gas prices high or the economy lackluster, just touting the "it wasn't MY idea so it's wrong" line. :D
John_Cline wrote on 5/24/2008, 6:42 AM
I'm perfectly happy with Vegas. I'm working on a HD project with 5.1 surround sound and Vegas is getting it done quite nicely.

Regarding "Bee's Knees"

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-bees-knees.html
blink3times wrote on 5/24/2008, 6:45 AM
There are shortcomings in ALL of these programs and that's a fact of life. There are ways that Vegas can be improved and I certainly do my fair share of whining when some of those areas come to light.... but over all, Vegas (IMO) is one of the best NLE's that I have used and we have a great crew (Madison) servicing the program. The interface is fast, efficient, and easy. The output options are endless. The repair patches come out in record time (relative to others), and there is constant research going on in the background for improvements. I believe it's a package that's hard to beat.

(The Madison boys are going to have to start watching Edius though. I've come to notice it's fast gaining a reputation for its speed in HD editing)
farss wrote on 5/24/2008, 6:53 AM
Seeing as how Sony recommended Edius as being the best for their XDCAM I had a quick look at it. Very impressed. Works in YUV. Doesn't try to do everything unlike Vegas, just a rock solid editor built for editors not soccer mums. They seem to have sold 400 seats to NBC with integrated media management. It looks like what Vegas could have been.
At the roadshow Vegas was a no show, at the bottom of one table in one PPT. The big guns were FCP, Avid's MC and Edius. Sony premium reseller down here sells the first two, one guy supports Edius. But heck, he can sell you a turnkey system, if it crashes he fixes it.
Bob.
Laurence wrote on 5/24/2008, 7:48 AM
Man I am thrilled! I'm working with native hdv mt2 on the timeline, doing lightning fast smart-renders into hdv masters that look like original footage only editied. It's not just Vegas I am happy with, Ultimate-S 4 integration into Vegas 8 is just seamless. I find I'm using it's incredible features all the time. The Vegas/Ultimate-S 4 combo just blows any competition out of the water IMHO.
michaelshive wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:15 AM
Not as happy as I used to be, that's for sure. Prior to Vegas 8 I could count the number of crashes I had while using Vegas on one hand. Now when I edit HDV I'm lucky if I get through a session without crashing at least that many times.

We now have a souped up Mac Pro at work with a Kona card and I've been digitizing my HD projects via HD-SDI into Prores with rock-solid editing results. It is unfortunate but FCP has become my default HD NLE and I usually only use Vegas on SD projects now. I just can't afford to get up against a deadline and not be able rely on my NLE. Others in this forum seem to be avoiding these issues and I'd really love to know how to properly set up a system so that Vegas will not crash. Having used Vegas since version 4 and being fairly competent with setting up PC's, I just can't imagine what voodoo is involved that I haven't tried yet.

The other thing that has bugged me about Vegas in comparison to FCP and Avid is that I am constantly tweaking things to try to get a full 29.97 preview with NO dropped frames during playback. When a client is editing with me and I have a rendered timeline, why will Vegas intermittently drop to 24fps for a second and then back up? This happens on every single Vegas install on every machine I've ever used. Invariably it confuses the client and reflects poorly on me. In Final Cut or Avid, if you're rendered you are guaranteed to play smoothly with no dropped frames.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:35 AM
I am happy with 7.0d, but resigned to the likelihood that the days of creative, cutting-edge features, responsive quick performance, and compact excellent coding are probably behind us. When the bloated bolt-on media manager was introduced, that was the indication of the change in programming and development. What product management group would permit a single feature to become larger than the whole application? It was an amazingly poor design choice.

Also, in the past, except for a few problems at the beginning of each release, there was never the plethora of posts that had the subject "crash" or "bug" in the title. Certainly these never extended beyond the "a" version of a revision. However, V8 still seems to have lots of people tip-toeing around problems, and from what I can tell, 32-bit still doesn't work for most people six months after it was released.

As for "jumping ship," I am too old to learn a different editor, and the brilliance of the original design still shines through in so many ways. I still wish that Sony would hire a decent product manager who, if he/she had the "right stuff," would host a get-together of people from this forum where we would all sit down in front of a computer and spend several days editing real stuff. Then, every time we hit something where the interface was awkward (like the "playhead" issue being discussed in another thread) or some problem showed up, we'd raise our hand, they'd take notes, and then later in the day we'd have a get together to discuss all the issues brought up by everyone. While some people's frustrations are not shared by others, some are universal.

But I don't think this is likely ...


video777 wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:36 AM
I'm loving Vegas. Maybe I'm the wrong person to ask because I suffered through years and years of Pinnacle Studio and Liquid.

The other thing that has bugged me about Vegas in comparison to FCP and Avid is that I am constantly tweaking things to try to get a full 29.97 preview with NO dropped frames during playback. When a client is editing with me and I have a rendered timeline, why will Vegas intermittently drop to 24fps for a second and then back up? This happens on every single Vegas install on every machine I've ever used. Invariably it confuses the client and reflects poorly on me. In Final Cut or Avid, if you're rendered you are guaranteed to play smoothly with no dropped frames.
I have never had this happen. Based on your comments it sounds like there is an issue with your system.
Xander wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:40 AM
The last update on my support ticket (Pre NAB 2008) said to wait for the Vegas 8c update, so I'm waiting... Next month by the sounds of it.
Laurence wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:45 AM
Not as happy as I used to be, that's for sure. Prior to Vegas 8 I could count the number of crashes I had while using Vegas on one hand. Now when I edit HDV I'm lucky if I get through a session without crashing at least that many times.

That is because of errors introduced during the HDV capture. I'm sure of it.

You're not having problems with FCP crashing because of the conversion into the AIC. You could get the same stability by converting into Cineform with Vegas, but really the solution is to figure out how to get rid of the errors that are introduced during capture.

I get clean captures using HDVSplit with the video preview turned off and virus protection and other background processes turned off during capture, but before I figured this out I had constant crashes as well.
Laurence wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:52 AM
I am happy with 7.0d, but resigned to the likelihood that the days of creative, cutting-edge features, responsive quick performance, and compact excellent coding are probably behind us.

7d has the advantage of not crashing on m2t clips with errors, but as you've noticed it's performance is far from quick and responsive.

I have very stable performance out of 8b, but I have to be really careful during HDV capture in order to get clips that don't get the crashing that has kept you from updating. It is well worth the effort however. 8b preview performance is MUCH better than that of 7d and earlier.
Harold Brown wrote on 5/24/2008, 8:54 AM
No problems here. I built a new machine with Vista Ultimate and expected to have problems but I haven't had anything major. A few glitches that I identified and fixed. In fact I really don't see where Vista is slower than XP. I know that driver issues and the like were there at the beginning but with SP1 I just don't see any problems and XP was never perfect either. So over all I am happy with Vegas Pro and Vista. I have 2 published DVDs using Vegas Pro 8 with zero problems with it or DVDA 4.5. :)
craftech wrote on 5/24/2008, 9:14 AM
"Is Everybody Happy"?

Ted Lewis 1890-1971.

John
fausseplanete wrote on 5/24/2008, 9:20 AM
Not crashing and no show-stoppers on my trusty XP (SP2) Compaq Presario laptop (Athlon single core) with 2GB RAM. Only problems affecting me are CPU-intensive (hence low framerate) preview, plugin-unfriendliness (e.g. giving synch errors) and Windows Media renders never terminate (which impedes batch-rendering). Other than that, mostly OK apart from a few nuisances I wish they'd iron-out.
CorTed wrote on 5/24/2008, 9:30 AM
I am, I think like many here just patiently awaiting 8.0c.
I am hoping that it will fix some of the memory issues and the various crashes I seem to get using MPEG2 files.
There is no reason to rant and rave here, as Sony has their own agenda for releasing versions, and fixing problems they think need fixing. Before 8.0 I never had any crashes, and the software was rock solid. Then there was 8.0 (Pro) along with a Pro Titler, which still today I am having slight issues with and find odd to use. I am still trying to figure out what is PRO in the titler.

But all in all I love Vegas, because when it DOES work, it really works great and offers endless possibilities.

Can't wait for next month to see if 8.0c will do the trick for me.

Ted
farss wrote on 5/24/2008, 10:00 AM
I must say I find it remarkable the low level of what is considered acceptable. Something crashing because of an error in data input, especially from something know to be error prone, is unacceptable in my opinion. Can you image if we were talking about a car, would we consider it acceptable if a wheel fell off so long as it was only when you hit a bump in the road?

And having found that problem with the design of the car what would be the outcry if the manufacturer continued to sell such defective goods?

I write this at 3AM, still trying to sort out a simple HDV project. Thinking I had a defective sector on the HD as three goes at rendering it have hung at the same point I tried repairing the disk, no joy. Tried copying the offending m2t file elsewhere, I'm now looking at 7.0d being stuck for 10 minutes 96% of the way through building the peak files for the clip.

Oh goody, that finished. Problem still there though, if I scrub over the suspect area 7.0d hangs with the HDD light hard on. Yes clearly something in that file. And then after many minutes the thrashing stops and it produces a frame on the preview window. The joy of it, what a great program, something to recommend to people I don't like.

Bob.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/24/2008, 10:23 AM
What I think you can "hear" in Bob's last post, and which you can certainly hear in many of mine, is the frustration in dealing with the same problems, over and over, which have been reported both in this forum and in countless reports to tech support, but which fail to be addressed after months and years. How long did it take the several different HDV black frame issued to get fixed? Are they really fixed in 8.0b? How about rendering hangs with large pixel count still photos? 32-bit render hangs? I could go on.

The reason why almost everyone in these forums comes across as angry or sour at one point or another is that we have to work against deadlines, and these problems cost us not only money, but reputation. The former we can recover in time; the latter can seldom be repaired completely.

All things in life are imperfect, but software is especially prone to the imperfections of man. However, I've been in the software business for a long, long time and I know the secret of how to deal with this:

You have to care.

It your software causes people problems, it has to matter to you as the product manager, president, engineering manager, or software developer. While you always are more interested in the next cool thing, and don't want to deal with the bug list that has grown to 450 separate "class A" or "class B" priorities, you have to care and you have to have enough pride to take that on and deal with it. And the reality is that all commercial software has exactly this sort of enormous bug list. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to look at that list and look at the fact that people are still buying your software, or that Pinnacle is still full of more bugs than your own software, and use that to justify not dealing with gipes and bugs and "issues." I understand this: Fixing bugs is tedious, dull, uninspirational, and not particularly rewarding. Except for this one thing:

It matters.
CClub wrote on 5/24/2008, 10:37 AM
When Michaelshive noted above the problems with preview in Vegas, he stated that when using FCP "If you're rendered, " you don't have any problem with preview. Does this mean that when you put events on the timeline in FCP, it pre-renders them and so there is no problems with the preview? I guess my question is, can't we do this via various methods in Vegas? If I'm doing Multi-Cam in Excalibur, it gives me the choice of pre-rendering the timeline so that I can preview in real-time. I believe that I can also pre-render in Vegas itself. But with Vegas, isn't the difference that I'm being given the option if I want to or not?
Laurence wrote on 5/24/2008, 11:04 AM



Yeah but these crashes aren't just limited to Vegas. HDV clips with errors will also crash WMP, PowerDVD, and from the posts I've read on various forums, Premier Pro as well.

Vegas needs to be fixed, but that fix should be directed at the capture utility. That's where the real problem lies, not in the editing process itself.

Extra error correction is fine, but not if it slows down the video preview and drops frames during the transitions like Vegas 7d.
michaelshive wrote on 5/24/2008, 11:09 AM
"Does this mean that when you put events on the timeline in FCP, it pre-renders them and so there is no problems with the preview?"

CClub - what I meant was that all these programs will play out your timeline with no dropped frames once everything is rendered. However, my degree of confidence in Vegas playing back with no problems or dropped frame is not great. In Avid or Final Cut I've never had this problem.

And Laurence, congratulations on your wonderful system. I've used Vegas for quite some time on lots of different computers and have found this problem to be endemic. Keep in eye on the fps playback counter in your video preview window and see if that never drops below 29.97 or whatever your project is set at - even on rendered material. The only time I'm positive I won't drop ANY frames during preview is when I printing to tape.

I was playing back a video last week for a client and before they got there I was trying to figure out the best way to show it to them. I found that if I undocked the playback window from the dock and let it float I didn't drop frames for some reason. This really isn't an acceptable workflow though.
StormMarc wrote on 5/24/2008, 12:12 PM
Date: 5/24/2008 12:11:43 PM

I still find Vegas to be my favorite editor, very fast and a joy to use. That said I would like to see the following resolved:

1. Plugin architecture that works like other programs. Third party support is severly limited and keeps Vegas in the "toy" realm for many editors on the outside looking in.

2. 32 bit that actually works.

3. More detailed explanations of program features such at the new titler etc.

4. No more render hangs.... ugh! I'm continually piece mealing renders to finish my log-form projects.
CClub wrote on 5/24/2008, 12:43 PM
Michaelshive,
I think I understand what you mean. I'm not asking this in any attempt to be a Vegas fanboy; I've used Vegas for a long time and love it. But I'm keeping in mind other NLE's that I may need to add to my expertise if I ever ventured into much collaboration. When you render the timeline in Avid or FCP, how long does that process take? And how would that differ from pre-rendering the timeline in Vegas so you don't get dropped frames? If I pre-render the Vegas timeline, or use Cineform or an intermediate, I don't get dropped frames either.
richard-courtney wrote on 5/24/2008, 1:03 PM
Life has been good....

As far as Vegas, still my favorite.
I do wish they had a LINUX port. (Debian please)

I use Cinelerra for its' motion tracking ability. While I could do some
editing there, I still bring it back "HOME" to Vegas!
riredale wrote on 5/24/2008, 2:09 PM
Just insanely, deliriously happy with 7d.

Maybe it's because it's an unusually nice, sunny day here in Oregon, with temps in the mid-70's.

Actually, there are concerns:

(1) Who the hell IS the Vegas Product Manger, and why isn't he/she on this board all the time, talking to REAL USERS with REAL ISSUES?

(2) Why haven't the Vegas people discussed the black frame issue on this board? Honestly, this can't be that hard to track down.

(3) Why can't I lose the 10 pounds that I seem to have gained over the past 5 years?


By the way, what's all this about "crashing?" In all the years and projects involving Vegas, I've crashed maybe once or twice. I don't use MediaManger, and I don't use V8--are those factors?