This is Lowtaxico's only thread and ramirot just signed onto the forum today... Hmmmm...

But vegas 2 to 9... if you've been with 2 this long, why not just use it until, hopefully, the bad parts of 9 are fixed?

Don't get the wrong idea...I haven't "used" 2 in over 5 years...I just moved on to a different app for audio. I have stayed current with SCS with Acid and I check these boards almost daily.

And after holding out for 7 consecutive upgrades - I think I have done enough "voting" with my pocketbook :)

Sure - I could flashback in time to v2 but I bought 9 for a reason...I never thought we would hit an issue that is such a complete disaster like this text bug.

Here's hoping Sony gets on the case and irons this one out quick...it's almost certainly time for a rare "hotfix".

Cheers!

VP

"A COMPLETELY different program that has very little in common with V7, V8 and V9 "

Not at all. You need to understand the difference between function and feature. The only change in the feature set of Vegas that would have required a change to the functional design that I can think of would have been the support for multichannel audio files.
An example of a change in the function of Vegas that would make it a completely different program would be if a dissolve had a red cross throught it that wouldn't play until it was rendered.

Even V4 supported HD, upto 2K. Even that was a pretty arbitary limit, I doubt anything in the functional design would have imposed any limit on how large the frame size could have been. My first paying job with V4 I had monsterous tiff images on the T/L and it chugged through them, slowly, but it never once winked out. I'd have serious reservations about attempting the same project with V8 or V9.

One of the most serious challenges an engineer faces is the push by marketing to bolt on more features. Many times I've had to say them 'sure, I can do this but first I have to write a new functional specification, this is not going to be the same program with an extra feature, it's going to be a new program with some of the features of the old one'. More than once I've had to redo a design because so much has been bolted onto the old design over the years that the code is a mess, hard to maintain and problematic to test.

I can relate one experience I had with V4/5 that does relate to the current crop of problems. I had to edit a long source that was WMV, encoded for streaming. It had only one I / keyframe. You think HDV / AVC is bear to edit, try something with a 1,000+ frame GOP, yish. My grief was resolved with input from SoFo, convert it to an AVI file first. Worked at treat. Nothing has changed except now Vegas is trying to buffer long GOP HD. Marketing has seen native editing of Long GOP HD as a nice bullet point and there isn't any going back. Any doubt about this comes from SCS themsleves who are now recommending converting source files to Cineform for a better editing experience. If they'd stuck to that concept from the day Cineform was added to Vegas we might well not be in the pickle we're in today.

Bob.

"Not at all. You need to understand the difference between function and feature."

You seem to think that adding all these features is easy as 1, 2, 3. How many times have you seen it over and over again from Sony right on over to Microsoft.... they add one thing and end up breaking another. If it's all so easy then why does this happen.... and why aren't you a software engineer?

Function and feature are intertwined. You can't play with one without playing with the other. Take for example M2TSplug.dll which did not do avchd.... UNTIL version 7. The same file i/o plug now handles mpeg2 and avchd. It's not hard to imagine screwing up mpeg2 i/o operations while finetuning for avchd. The trimmer now handles multiple audio tracks to accommodate ac3..... not hard to imagine screwing up one section of the trimmer in the process.

Every time a feature is added it stands a good chance of having an effect on function some where along the line.

"Every time a feature is added it stands a good chance of having an effect on function some where along the line."

Yes, oh YES!
The big question is how you handle this, do you bite the bullet and redo the functional side or do you try to massage your functionality to accomodate the feature. The first approach means you might loose features e.g. ease of use, the later has the risks of bloat and more code modules, things can get messy over time.

Take the long GOP no recompress feature. That's a nightmare because there's technical limitations, you can't edit a fixed GOP without consideration for the underlying media's structure. You can impose a restriction on the feature, all edits must occur on GOP boundaries. All you need add is a way to see where the GOP boundaries are. For many that might seem like quite an onerous restriction on the feature however functionally it will work, always. If this was how it'd been done in Vegas it would have been a fantastic feature for many, being able to trim a HDV tape and put the media back to tape without any loss would have had people buying Vegas just for that, even if they were still using their Avid systems for editing.

Bob.

"If this was how it'd been done in Vegas it would have been a fantastic feature for many,"

So now you've gone from 'what is' to 'what should be' (or at least what YOU think should be).... 2 different things entirely. Let's try and stay on track here.

Vegas, like any other program is what it is. Now it could stagnate like FCP or MC, not changing too much over time and thereby appease the pros who tend to like the tried-true approach (if it ain't broke don't fix it). Or... you could do what Vegas is doing now... evolving. Personally speaking... I like to see Vegas evolve and grow. But this simply can not be done without hick-ups along the way and Vegas HAS evolved tremendously from version 4. Vegas 9 today can do things that you could only dream of doing back in Version 4.... and as said before, feature and function are intertwined and there is a terrific chance that you will effect one while playing with the other.

This "modular" design and activity you talked about earlier is a wonderful idea and it sure makes life easier.... if you need to make a change.... then change out the module. But that does not change one module's dependency on another and the possible adverse effects one module can have on another should things go bad. PC's are built on a modular basis.... but that doesn't stop a power supply from frying a mobo, cpu.... etc when it blows.

Now... can Vegas be written better? Sure it can. ANYTHING can ALWAYS be done better. But at what point do you draw the line and say the price is too high? Sony made that mistake already with the PS3..... built the grand Poo-Bah of game consoles.... built themselves right out of the game console market too because nobody was interested in paying that much.

if you are using Vegas professionally then you would have to invest in some more tools that will speed up your workflow
I would recommend Heroglyph from proDAD the interface with Vegas IS smooth and quick
I see they have a special running at DJ….now that’s a good investment

unfortunately Heroglyph like pro titler has the tendency to make spelling mistakes
MAN I WISH THEY COULD FIX THAT