Sorry, this is a bit of a rant but I'm not a terribly happy customer.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and upgrade MS13 Suite to MS14 Suite, the upgrade wasn't a lot of money and it looked like it had a better interface (did anyone want the touch screen interface of MS13?). First barrier to jump was the upgrade link in MS13 was wrong but a quick email to support fixed that, not a great start but I'll live with it.
I looked through the features of MS14 Suite and figured they were basically the same as the previous version so the upgrade was worth it, I'd be able to do what I could before with a nice interface and a few tweaks around the edges. So, I pay my money time to take my chance...
The installation procedure for MS14 Suite is an absolute nightmare. The download manager looks like it's going to make the process simple but in reality it results in a dozen windows popping up requiring you to create accounts here there and everywhere and put in a laundry list of serial numbers. The stuff from HitFilm is particularly bad - the window requiring you to create an account goes to FXHome, it wasn't entirely clear to this particular novice that this is the same company that makes HitFilm.
Well I persevered and eventually everything was installed, time to play with my new toys. The new MS14 looks good, definitely an improvement on the MS13 interface but I'm sorry to say that's about the limit of the positive experiences so far.
I'll start gently, I don't use a lot of music so it's not a huge disappointment but shipping SonicFire with just a dozen pieces of (presumably free, I can't find a license anywhere) music is cheap - the application is basically just a vehicle to sell more stuff which is sadly a recurring theme.
The real disappointment is NewBlueFX Titler Pro Express. It's my own fault but I had assumed this was the same sort of thing as NewBlue Titler EX which came with MS13 Suite - with such similar names I think I can be forgiven for the assumption. Sadly Titler Pro Express is anything but a pro tool and totally different to Titler EX. Titler Pro Express is a very small collection of titles, lower thirds and motion bugs that just about make it over the usable line if, and only if, you are happy to use them exactly as they are because there's essentially no options for modifying them.
The absolute worst part of this NewBlue change for me was that almost all my projects to date depend on some Titler EX features. This means none of my MS13 projects and some templates I use all the time can be edited in MS14 unless I strip out all the Title EX features. I suppose I could reinstall MS13 and edit old projects with that but what a backward step. It seems Titler Pro Express is just a vehicle to try and sell you the real thing - thank's, I really wanted to buy some advertising.
See reply below this was never an issue, I just didn't know there was an option to control it. To heap even more disappointment on the pile I notice that my biggest frustration with MS13 is still there. Why when you switch away and then back to MS is there a pause of a few seconds while it gets itself ready. I write transcripts of my videos so I switch between MS and Word quite a bit and that pause gets really annoying. My guess is that MS tries to save memory by swapping stuff out, please give us the option to stop that. I've got 32GB of ram I'd happily give MS 10GB all to iself if it needs it to stop that pause!
If I could go back to before I bought the upgrade I wouldn't have bought it. In fact the loss of Titler EX is bad enough for me that I don't think I'd have even upgraded even if it was free. Someone in another thread mentioned HitFilm 4 Express, having installed that and had a play I'm starting to wonder why I'm using MS at all.
Sorry for the rant, I was quite looking forward to a new an improved MS but what I've ended up with is feeling like I've been a bit ripped off.