My opinion on all these Vegas bug reports

johnmeyer wrote on 9/7/2008, 1:42 PM

Over the years, I have posted over 8,000 times on this board, mostly in this particular forum. I never upgraded to Vegas 8 because of all the bugs reported here.

Vegas 8 was introduced on August 30, 2007, over a year ago: Press Release

and started shipping shortly thereafter.

Vegas Pro 64 bit was introduced on March 11, 2008: Press Release

and has yet to ship.

Users have repeatedly reported major Vegas 8 bugs in these forums. These bugs affect many, although apparently not all, users. These bugs include black frames with HDV. Some of these bugs go back to the previous release. After almost two years of the HDV black frame problem, two months ago, Sony finally acknowledged the black frame problem and started publicly testing a DLL file that definitely changes the behavior, although based on reports in this forum may also may produce some unwanted side effects.

Sony has provide zero feedback to either this forum or, apparently, to individual testers about the status of this attempt to fix just one of the several problems which seem to plague Vegas 8.x.

It is clear that 8.x also continues to have serious problems editing AVCHD files.

Apparently there is some patch about to be released. If it fixes ALL of the major HDV and AVCHD bugs, without causing Vegas to break in new ways, then many of us will be happy (I will finally upgrade to 8.x). However, given that it has been an entire year since this product was released, and given that some of these problems go back further than that, and given that these problems are fundamental to the function of the product (e.g., random, black frames), I find Sony's slow response and total lack of interaction with it's most rabid customers completely and .

Actually, “slow response” doesn't begin to describe the pathetic response to these problems.

Perhaps the people in this forum are not important to their financial success. It is certainly true that this is how we are treated: Would it really be that hard for Sony to post here once every day or two??? However, whether we are important to them financially, I would hope that collectively we are important to the technical quality of the product.

I am at the point that I no longer want to continue with this product, and certainly don't want to waste my time contributing here, unless Sony is going to change its ways.

They need to fix this product, and they also need to find someone who is willing to spend a few minutes every day contributing to this forum. If they don't do both of those things, I will figure out some way to take my business elsewhere.

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Comments

Robert W wrote on 9/8/2008, 2:50 AM

I really think it is memory leaks that cause these problems. For some people it tends to spill into the actual video handling, for others the GUI. The GUI is my major problem. I tend to get hangs with locked up white menu bars. This happens now and then in single screen mode, but very often in multi screen modes.

It is simple code integrity,

Serena wrote on 9/8/2008, 2:58 AM

You can see why Sony ignores these threads.

blink3times wrote on 9/8/2008, 3:16 AM

"Waiting a YEAR for basic fixes since it's initial release could hardly cause puzzlement. "

Like I said way above.... This sounds like ANY other forum or update situation. I waited an entire year for an Avid Liquid update on a Liquid that was COMPLETELY unusable until that update.

8c was supposed to be out quite some time ago and it wasn't. This I would imagine shows you the level at which Sony is going to correct things.

Serena brings up a great issue... most of these bugs are those that are NOT affecting every one... just certain people and it is these kinds of bugs that are the most difficult to get a handle on. Why do people think Sony introduced the new DLL as a beta for the public?? This is NOT the norm for a company and it in fact shows you that Sony is aware, listening, and working on the issues. Try going to Avid.... this just WOULD NOT happen.

On the issue of monitors.... I'm running dual monitors with NO issues at all with exception to capturing. This in fact is the only issue I have now..... one of my cams gets its scenes split consistently 3 frames late. I have NO issues with rendering at all now (even with the old DLL).... and I'm rendering 2 hour HDV time lines with 400 or more scenes.

Don't get me wrong.... I'm not defending Sony. I think it was wrong of Sony to introduce Vegas 64 so early in the ball game at such a raw stage. Obviously they're having a hard time living up to the expectation. I'm also quite embarrassed over the state of the avchd editing. Logically speaking Sony should have been the first out of the box here with reliable editing and they weren't (and still aren't). What I am simply saying is that it is NO DIFFERENT ANYWHERE ELSE.

Robert W wrote on 9/8/2008, 4:04 AM

I see, everybody else is cack so we have to accept it. There is a cartel of sloppyness and poor service, so we should not be complaining. I did not realise they were competing on how poor they could be and the user only had a right to complain if they were getting the worst of it.

If that logic worked then it would only take a few of the major players to chip in a few quid to form some decoy company that produced a rubbish piece of software to make them look good.

I do not give a monkeys about other software or what the state of play is. I do not care if Sony is just one more company in a morass of shambolic product development. This is not an excuse for them to rest upon their laurels. I mean, this is supposed to be a Japanese owned company. I am staggered that they have got to this pathetic state. It is shocking.

It has taken them more time than it has previously taken them to write a whole new release to get one single and very important revision out. Does this not scream major development crisis to anyone?

They release version 8 quite clearly before it was complete and not out of alpha stage. For me the big attraction of Vegas over the competition was it's performance and reliability on more conservative machines than it's competition. I am now finding that not only am I losing reliability through the bugs, but the performance I gained from it is being lost in resets and crashed renders etc...

Xander wrote on 9/8/2008, 5:43 AM

I don't recall any Vegas 8b crashes since I installed the beta m2tsplug.dll file. I have also stopped using 32 bit mode. Adobe is announcing CS4 on September 23rd. Vegas 8c and/or 8.1 (64 bit) are speculated to get announced at IBC.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that 9 months has been worth the wait.

blink3times wrote on 9/8/2008, 5:53 AM

"I see, everybody else is cack so we have to accept it. There is a cartel of sloppyness and poor service, so we should not be complaining."

Not saying that at all. What I will say though is that one man's sloppiness is another man's bliss.
I've seen things here that just don't take place else where. Never in a million years would they release a DLL beta to the Avid Liquid users. Liquid 7.2 has been out since 2005 and they're STILL issuing some pretty major patches. I don't know.... is Sony REALLY that bad? I guess it depends on who you talk to.

JJKizak wrote on 9/8/2008, 7:14 AM

The only problems I have had with V8.0b in Vista 64 are motherboard drivers, a small problem with the Cineform GUI which comes up sometimes first or second attempt, and shaky Nero GUI with all of their first and secondary GUI nonsense. I even test rendered a small SD file in 32 bit with no problems except long render time.
8 gig ram, Q6600, Nvidia video, no overclocking.
JJK

Coursedesign wrote on 9/8/2008, 11:32 AM

Never in a million years would they release a DLL beta to the Avid Liquid users.

Right. Because Liquid is their ugly stepchild, just like Vegas seems to be Sony's ugly (=less profitable) stepchild compared to the fairy-haired VMS that gets 99% of the attention.

It's odd also how quick people are to say that "Avid is bad," "FCP sucks," "Premiere Pro is great," etc.

Avid's Media Composer is unbeatable for certain things, ditto FCP and PP and Vegas.

And they all have "don't go there" areas.

So it makes sense to have two NLEs if you do editing for a living.

Which two? You mean Vegas and which other one?

The choice has to depend on the formats you work with and what your needs are besides simple cuts.

Vegas is fastest when it can be used, thanks to its so far unique paradigm.

FCP supports the most formats (think Chinese restaurant menu), and has unmatched 3rd party support.

Avid Media Composer is #1 for "organic" editing, with trim tools that are simply unmatched by anyone else. It also has very competent film support.

PP has the dynamic linking with AE that can be a time saver also. And 2K support, etc.

jabloomf1230 wrote on 9/8/2008, 12:17 PM

I've been running Vegas 8 Pro under Vista x64 and I do not experience all these problems/crashes that people here are focused on. That said, I think that the reason that the IBM-compatible PC is losing ground as a platform, is that software writers have a hard time coping with all the flavors of Windows and all the PC hardware permutations. The bigger the software company, the more likely it is to worry about making the product work on a variety of platforms and with a wide variety of PC hardware.

Although my first NLE was Adobe Premiere 1.0, I starting using Vegas after version 4.0 came out and gradually began using Vegas exclusively by version 6.0. Unfortunately, for reasons that are only interesting to me, I am now back to using both Vegas 8 and the Adobe CS3 suite. Although my experience is with Vista x64 (which is not typical), I can tell you that Photoshop CS3 seems to run the best (Duhhh, it doesn't handle video), then Premiere CS3, then Vegas 8 Pro and finally After Effects CS3. When I say "best", I mean both less crashes and less numerous counterintuitive/counterproductive results.

If Vegas continues on it's present declining path, I would see the Premiere/After Effects option as a viable route for Vegas users. And on September 23, 2008, when Adobe announces the CS4 Suite, we may be seeing a faster transition than even I expect.

I am not a Vegas fanbois. I like using it, but it really isn't any better or worse than using Premiere. it's just different. The advantages of Premiere are the size of the installed user base (and all the online tutorials, forums and blogs), the fact that it's part of an integrated suite, that it runs on both PCs and Macs and that Adobe is a big, focused company. Adobe is not an Microsoft or Apple, but they do provide much better user support than SCS (a small part of big company, Sony), although these days, in the software industry, the term "user support" is somewhat of an oxymoron.

I sit here hoping that SCS will pull off a miracle with Vegas 8.1 or possibly with Vegas 64 bit. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

blink3times wrote on 9/8/2008, 3:28 PM

"Right. Because Liquid is their ugly stepchild, just like Vegas seems to be Sony's ugly (=less profitable) stepchild compared to the fairy-haired VMS that gets 99% of the attention."

MC isn't exactly "their ugly stepchild" but you go to the MC forums and ask when ever there was a time they released a beta for wide testing. Moral of the story: it's not the program but rather the ways of a given company.

As for MC being an "unbeatable" NLE.... yes it is very good..... at the FEW things it was built to do, and I mean FEW things. Try importing a M2T, a M2TS, a TS, a mpeg4.... or even a M2V (Liquid's primary file format). Once you've discovered that you can't and have to transcode it... have a look at the FEW export formats/options.

They have also pretty much slashed the price in 1/2 and added a whole pile of 3rd party extras in order to compete with FCP. I often wonder how ripped off the original MC owners feel.... you know.... the ones that paid the original $5000 price tag. Think about that for a minute.... they've slashed the price in 1/2 and they're STILL turning a profit on it (otherwise they wouldn't have done it) I wonder how many corporate swimming pools all that extra cash has built over the years!?

John_Cline wrote on 9/8/2008, 3:35 PM

"I often wonder ripped off the original MC owners feel.... you know.... the ones that paid the original $5000 price tag."

They probably made their $5,000 back on the first project. I covered the cost of Vegas long before the first project was even finished.

blink3times wrote on 9/8/2008, 3:56 PM

"They probably made their $5,000 back on the first project. I covered the cost of Vegas long before the first project was even finished."

I pretty much recovered the price of my BD burner after the first BD disk.... but then that's not quite the point.

video777 wrote on 9/8/2008, 6:18 PM

> "Where are you seeing the post counts?" Click on your name.

Thank you. I would not have ever thought of that. I also see a very quick way to find all my recent posts.

fldave wrote on 9/8/2008, 7:33 PM

Here is my quick thoughts on this:

1-I've been saying for several years that what was holding back vegas was that it is based on VFW (microsoft video for windows) technology which is way beyond its life cycle end. Solid, but limited. I got rumbles that V7 had some aspects of getting away from VFW, and more so with V8. Maybe we are seeing the slow transition and problems emanating from that slow process? Didn't Adobe have an awful time transitioning away from VFW, their software was crap for a while?

2-Vista absolutely sucks, in my opinion, even Microsoft went into a big interview on how they made a series of errors totaling $10 billion. Making sure a program runs on one fairly stable platform (XP) while trying to make it run on a newer, crappy platform is a huge waste of limited resources, one that took away time on vital progress in new features and stability. Blame Microsoft 100% on this huge blunder and waste of Sony's and our time.

I'm doing most of my work in V7 right now, on XP, a project since early March. V8 somewhat, still more tinkering than anything. I did use V8 to record multitrack 24/96 audio via 1394 in March, on Vista, and it worked well. V7 on XP is working great.

jabloomf1230 wrote on 9/9/2008, 10:23 AM

"2-Vista absolutely sucks, in my opinion,"

I was waiting to see here long it would take to get to this. Vista does not "suck". It is more stable than XP. The problem with Vista, is that there is no viable reason to spend any money for the upgrade. Vista provides no useful extra features over XP, except a little better stability. Vista is mostly eye-candy and maybe a somewhat enhanced security. Is that worth a few hundred $US? It was to me, but that's a personal call.

And Vista x64 is a far better 64 bit platform than Windows XP x64. It's more stable and supports pretty much the same hardware drivers that 32 bit Vista does, except for very old, legacy stuff. BTW, I've run all four types of Windows, Vista and XP/64 and 32 bit, on the same computer, via multiple booting. Your experience may vary.

eVoke wrote on 9/9/2008, 3:13 PM

" would be curious to know how many people that suffer lots of bugs are running in multi screen modes or Otherwise. While I still get crashes, they are a lot rarer when running in single screen modes. But yes, the functionality of the product has been reduced for me as I have to use it in single screen mode in the interest of completing the project."

DJPadre wrote:
" I run 2 montiors on 2 workstations here, and 3 on the main rig..
No issues WHATSOEVER in regard to display causing flake outs.. "

After reading some of these posts I feel very fortunate to have a non-problematic install of Vegas Pro 8b on a AMD machine I put together myself - which is also running dual monitors. The only hiccup I've encountered is the one someone had posted as a "want" for the upcoming 8c update - that is the problem with capturing footage filmed in 24fps from the Canon XH A1. I'd like to see that added to the 8c update as well but if it's not - I'll continue using after effects and bullet frames as the work around.