On customer care - or just caring in general

Terje wrote on 6/23/2008, 1:21 PM
I have posted before that I feel I see a negative tendency with SCS and that this trend makes me worried about investing further in SCS software. Previously I have talked about how glaring quality issues typically is a reflection on rot in management and therefore a serious sign of problems, and other issues that makes me worry, not so much about the quality of the software as such, but of the quality of the organization.

A few weeks back SCS announced that they were releasing DVD-A 5 in mid-June, now your definition of mid may vary a lot, but by most definitions, it is no longer mid. Now, I have absolutely no problem at all with SCS delaying a release for a short while if they have run into some quality issues they need to fix, that is a Good Thing <sup>(TM)</sup>. Quality is more important than releasing exactly on time.

Obviously we all know about the announcements around Vegas 64 that never materialized to some peoples chagrin. Again, if there are quality issues, fine, hold back the release and fix the issues.

Finally, these fora. SCS owned and operated, but there literally no SCS presence here. There used to be as far as I can remember, but not so any more.

What kind of trend am I seeing here? I see a trend where there is nobody in the organization that cares about their customers. Not a single person.

If there were customer-centric people in SCS, they would communicate with their customers. If a release was, in any way announced and then delayed, they would immediately inform their customers, preferably with a new projected release date or information of some kind. If there were people in SCS that were customer focused at all they would have the overall responsibility of managing the SCS fora, making sure that important discussions had SCS personnel contributing if needed. There is no such presence.

I love Vegas, it is a great editor in my opinion. I do not have a particularly high opinion of Adobe traditionally but they have been doing some good stuff lately. I have watched a lot of good companies die due to lack of customer focus and lack of management who cares.

From the outside, SCS is currently showing a lot of bad signs, and that worries me. There is a good chance that I will not be upgrading to Vegas 9, not because Vegas isn't an excellent tool, it is, but because I am losing faith in the company that delivers it. If I am to invest any of my time and money in anything that I like to do, I have to have faith in the company I am handing over my cash to.

I don't use Premiere, but I do use Flex and Photoshop from Adobe, and I have to admit, the user experience and my experience with Adobe in general, is significantly better than was the case some 10 years ago when I was struggling with Photoshop at an Advertising Agency. Adobe also seems to have an overall strategy for their business while SCS seems to have no clue what they want to do with their future.

Is it time to forget about Vegas and go for CS3?

Sadly, since SCS is not monitoring these fora, they will never know that such concerns are aired among their loyal customer base.

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 6/23/2008, 1:58 PM
It was made clear by one SCS voice that the knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly SCS people who used to be here in this forum on a regular basis, were doing this in their unpaid spare time, at their own initiative, out of appreciation for their customers.

So what happened?

I am also concerned (speculating now) that the formerly very efficient group has had layers of management added over them, with these layers prioritizing paperwork and reporting upwards, to the point that there is no time left for the actual work (or no energy left for it after a lot of psychologically draining communication).

Microsoft used to be what SCS was, an efficient organization that repeatedly created miracles and general excellence. Then they got the current 11-12 layers of management (compared to the always 8 in General Motors!), and nothing gets done anymore, other than presumably internal reporting about how great the progress is on every subgoal.

I have a lot of sympathy for the staff in this situation. Sony doesn't have a track record in being able to make the most of their acquisitions, or even finding any synergy between the parts.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 6/23/2008, 2:01 PM
I have to agree with you on the issues you raise here Terje.

I'm having my own issues - Vegas - the concept - is by far the most forward thinking NLE on the market. The problem is, it seems to do what it does as a more hit/miss affair.

You would think something as simple as capturing m2t files via the Vegas HDV capture utility would be a straight forward process - yet the captured files will not load in Avid Media Composer. Not a single one. The only way I have discovered so far is to use HDVSplit on the existing m2t files I have and run scene detection on them. It finds glitches and actually splits those files!!! Than I can import them into Media Composer.

For very short form projects, Vegas Pro seems to work well - but I'm beginning to look at producing longer form projects and I just can't bring myself to trust Vegas Pro given the numerous issues people are having - especially with long form projects that cannot be rendered.

I'm testing Media Composer on a colleagues computer and so far, once I remove my blinders about editing the Avid way, I begin to understand why serious work is done on an Avid system. And I'm seriously considering Media Composer as my editor of choice after having been an advocate of Vegas Pro for the past year.

I'm trying to hold off in hopes that version 8.0c is released real soon and I can test to see if anything has been improved upon, but I'm getting more work and it's coming down to my having to make a decision sooner than that I have a feeling.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com
CorTed wrote on 6/23/2008, 2:01 PM
Terje, I completely agree with you.
I have raised this concern in a previous post. I think the biggest issue I have with this is that obviously there are some problems with 8.0b, just take a look at the various posts regarding crashing etc., but SCS does NOT say a word. How about an update in a sticky or something. You are right mid June has come and gone, without a word from SCS explaining why or when we may see any update.

I have been coming to this forum for quite a while, but I must say that the amount of people looking to change NLE's seems to be at an all time high.

Ted
winrockpost wrote on 6/23/2008, 2:23 PM
Not that it helps here ,, but its interesting to me that a couple of sony people still around on the audio side of things,
Coursedesign wrote on 6/23/2008, 2:31 PM
Most people who make a living from editing video need to be experienced in using multiple NLEs today.

All current NLEs have problems or limitations in some area.

I love using Vegas when I can use it, but because of product limitations that is not 100% of the time.

For learning Avid Media Composer as quickly as possible, I recommend "Avid Editing, Third Edition" by Sam Kauffmann, and "The Avid Handbook, Fourth Edition" by Steve Bayes (both from Focal Press, these books are legendary for good reason).

ClassOnDemand also has a DVD training I haven't picked up yet, but it seems good: Complete Training for Avid Media Composer.

John_Cline wrote on 6/23/2008, 3:11 PM
The "Mid-June" date for Vegas Pro v8.0c and DVD Architect v5 was in a press release from last April at NAB. (That date got mentioned a lot here on the forum, including by me.) A later SCS press release had the date as "Summer 2008." Summer just started a couple of days ago.
farss wrote on 6/23/2008, 3:38 PM
Can't help but agree with all of the above. Sad times indeed.
Some of the comments I read here about how nothing is wrong / 1000s of users don't have a problem, gave me an idea for a script but Thank You For Smoking has already done that.

Bob.
ChipGallo wrote on 6/23/2008, 5:43 PM
I'll soon be working on a multimedia support business plan and it won't fly with only one edit product. Not Sony's fault, just that in some markets you HAVE to use one of a couple of suites. I have written about my recent woes in getting an MPEG out of Vegas 8b and that is helping precipitate things, however, I can imagine the discussions around the next release of Vegas. One wonders what paid support calls sound like these days ...

Throw in the multi-core platforms, varieties of Windows, 64 bits, and so on and it becomes quite the slippery slope to keep everyone happy.
Xander wrote on 6/23/2008, 5:56 PM
I am disappointed that the ticket I opened in Nov '07 is due to be 'fixed' in 8c 'maybe', based on the last response to my ticket. I bought Adobe Master Collection early this year.
Bill Ravens wrote on 6/23/2008, 8:26 PM
I know, by my own doing, I'm persona non grata around here. But, I just had to jump in and notice that there's some hope for some people in this forum, after all..

LOL...great thread everyone
blink3times wrote on 6/24/2008, 3:12 AM
"Finally, these fora. SCS owned and operated, but there literally no SCS presence here. There used to be as far as I can remember, but not so any more."
It's called inflation and it's not just happening here but just about everyplace you go. The fact that SCS had the service at all is a one-up on many others.
.

"If there were customer-centric people in SCS, they would communicate with their customers."
Again, the fact that SCS is handing out release estimates is a one-up on just about all others. Avid can easily be crowned King for keeping people in the dark, and having stupidly long release dates. It's why I'm here in the first place.... waiting an entire year for a patch is just plain crazy.

Now what was that expression........ oh yes.................. The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence.
Rory Cooper wrote on 6/24/2008, 4:45 AM
Hey Coursedesign

how did your op go? Hope the j cuts didn’t leave any scars

Rory
Terje wrote on 6/24/2008, 5:15 AM
The fact that SCS had the service at all is a one-up on many others.

I do not own other video editing software, so I can not comment on video editing software, but for software in general your comment is absolutely wrong. Very much so. Several other pieces of software I own have online communities where the company employees are active participants.

In fact, my previous company (in my current that may still be the case, but I no longer work in that part of the organization) each new thread that was started on a discussion board ended up as a separate trouble ticket in the TT system and it was automatically assigned to a support engineer. Its priority was based on a quick word-analysis of the content.

Again, the fact that SCS is handing out release estimates is a one-up on just about all others.

Again, for video editing software, I can not comment, and if your only defense is "we are bad, but Avid is worse" then you are a bit short in the leg department to put it mildly. As for software in general, the comment above is utterly absurd. Announcing releases is the norm in the industry and when there are delays, these are typically also announced.

At my current company I am involved in the release and announce process, as I am in a sales/marketing related position. If we announce to our customers that a release date is 30 days into the future, we will release on that date. You see, 30 days before a release all work on that version has stopped, including testing. The only thing left is doc work and release related work. In other words, 30 days before GA there are no chance bugs to find since there is no more testing going on. The dev team has been moved onto other tasks.

Our process might be slightly longer than others perhaps, but again, 30 days before a release only the software equivalent of a nuclear accident should prevent you from releasing on the planned date.

The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence.

In my spare time, for fun, I do a bit of RIA development. I use Flex for this. Flex is, as you may or may not know, the software development tool that creates flash applications (rather than animations and stuff). Flex is excellent for this and you can do really cool stuff with it. It basically delivers on what Java promised 12 years ago.

Flex is an Adobe product, and if the attention Adobe is paying to me as a Flex developer is indicative of how Adobe treats its customers in general, then SCS has a few things to learn from Adobe. I can of course not say anything about whether this is the case, but I am extremely impressed by how Adobe now is rapidly integrating all of their offerings into a cohesive strategy. Flex and Flash (which is Macromedia, remember) is being tied into Premiere and After Effects. Acrobat is being merged with Flash and Flex (see acrobat.com for a very compelling example of Flash, Flex and Acrobat) etc.

In other words, from partly inside and partly outside, Adobe seems to have a very interesting, and customer focused, strategy. I can't say I see anything of the kind from SCS.
deusx wrote on 6/24/2008, 5:22 AM
>>>Some of the comments I read here about how nothing is wrong / 1000s of users don't have a problem, gave me an idea for a script but Thank You For Smoking has already done that.
<<<<

There are about 15-20 people, at most, on this forum, having serious problems, so unless there are only about 100 people on this entire planet using Vegas, I'd say majority are doing fine.

I have not had Vegas crash in years, any version, not while doing video editing, not while doing multitrack audio recording. And I've used files captured wth Vegas, cineform, and scenalyzer for SD stuff.
And most of the recent stuff is Canon 24pf which isn't supposed to work, well it works, and it works perfectly here, and it works with 32 bit too, and I've never smoked anything.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 6/24/2008, 7:17 AM
deusx - I went to look at your system specs and you haven't listed them - I'm curious as to what your hardware setup is to see why you're solid in the Vegas department while some seem to be suffering greatly.

Maybe there's something in your setup we could learn from to keep Vegas Pro running smoothly.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com
deusx wrote on 6/24/2008, 8:35 AM
Nothing special, these days good hardware is easy to find.

Last box I made myself was Athlon X 2 with MSI motherboard, raptor hard drive.

These days Vegas is only used on Sager 5790 laptop
( 17" 2.2ghz core2duo, 7200 rpm hard disk, 2gb ram, nVidia 7950 card )

Before that I used it on ASUS G1 laptop, no problems either ( version 7 )

Always nVidia video cards. All run winXP. no internet connection and anti virus ( that should be a requirement for any workstation )

The only thing I can think of is that although I can drop 50-60 clips on a timeline sometimes, I don't do long projects ( over 60 minutes ), but even if I did, I'd break them up into smaller pieces, easier to work in my opinion.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 6/24/2008, 8:43 AM
My gut feeling is that Vegas seems to have less issues on machines running AMD processors. I've also seen that anyone running quad core processors from Intel seems to have more problems as compared to those running dual core processors.

I'm still running an AMD 3800x2 AM2 processor and other than being a little sluggish once effects are added to clips, it has been pretty solid running VP8. Maybe my bottle neck is a combination of CPU and using older IDE drives for my raid0 (2x160GB 7200RPM Seagate drives).

For your laptop, how are you dealing with editing your footage - are you using a separate drive via Firewire or eSata?

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com
deusx wrote on 6/24/2008, 8:51 AM
Actually external drives are connected via usb, and that was one of the things I was worried about when buying a laptop.

HD enclosures have both, firewire and usb ( one has eSata too ), but since I haven't had any problems using them via usb, just keep it that way. Firewire is used by RME fireface.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/24/2008, 8:59 AM
My gut feeling is that Vegas seems to have less issues on machines running AMD processors. I've also seen that anyone running quad core processors from Intel seems to have more problems as compared to those running dual core processors.

I second that. i've either run Vegas on a P3 (which was rock solid), an AMD XP, 64, X2 & Phenom. It's rock solid on all of those (use ATI video too, but that affects gaming). My wife's Intel laptop seems to have issues (a duel core laptop).
Cliff Etzel wrote on 6/24/2008, 9:02 AM
HappyFriar - how has your experience been with the Quad Phenom? Have you seen any real performance advantage when rendering out in Vegas???

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com
CorTed wrote on 6/24/2008, 9:34 AM
"The only thing I can think of is that although I can drop 50-60 clips on a timeline sometimes, I don't do long projects ( over 60 minutes ), but even if I did, I'd break them up into smaller pieces, easier to work in my opinion. "-deusx

That is key !!
A memory problem occurs when you have longer projects. Or perhaps projects that require the usage of more memory. I tested months ago that when the actual RAM usage approaches 60-70% the render will undoubtedly fail. (memory usage increases the more you put on the timeline)
I was able to repeat this over and over. I tried to figure out if the clips were causing the crashes but then took the same project cut it up in segments to stay around 40% mem usage and Vegas was 'happy'.

I am running an MSI board with Nvidia card as well (along with Q6600 Intel Quadcore)

My workflow today is to watch the mem usage and start a new segment as soon as the meter passes 45%.

I call this a bug in the software. SCS has known about this since the release of 8.0, and after some 9 months I think they should have a fix for this.


Ted
Cliff Etzel wrote on 6/24/2008, 10:21 AM
I wonder if this is indicative of those running on 32bit XP - I've not had this kind of issue running x64 XP Pro and maybe the way it handles memory is a reason for that.

I'm looking at if my current IDE based raid0 setup has been the bottleneck for my work on my desktop. I'm running a pair of Seagate 160GB 7200RPM drives on a sil0680 PCI Raid card in raid0 configuration and am considering the WD 640GB drives on a separate sata raid card - even thinking of doing a raid5 for redundancy, but not sure if I would take a hit in drive access.

Only speculating though.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com
Coursedesign wrote on 6/24/2008, 10:38 AM
Just did the Decklink Speedtest on my WD two-platter 640GB drive:

~ 103 MB/s both read and write, for ONE drive (no RAID).

That really rocks, and note this is the Decklink Speedtest that tests transfers of large blocks.

Most of the usual disk benchmarks just test the speed of the drive buffer RAM.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/24/2008, 10:38 AM
HappyFriar - how has your experience been with the Quad Phenom? Have you seen any real performance advantage when rendering out in Vegas???

I've only had two issues: 1) my memory was bad, two sets. So I replaced with a different brand & all my crashing issues went away. 2) I didn't (forgot?) have my CPU fan/heatsink clipped down all the way. I kept rebooting because of overheating. Stupid, stupid me (but, as a plus, the CPU will happily work at ~80c for months on end with no issues. :) ).

My 9600 is slower then the closest intel competitor, but like I've said, I've had 0 issues with AMD's, ever, and nobody I know personally has had 0 issues with intels. IE same software, different CPU's, I have no issues, they do.

It normally uses all 4 cores when rendering. Fast imho (came from a X2). Normally, though, I've ended up using several instances of Vegas each with 2 cores's set in the affinity settings so I can edit & render pretty fast. :D in "preview - auto" I normally get ~30fps previews even with FX, 3d track motion, etc. Rendering is normally done overnight anyway. I've gotten a good editing process down from when I used my P3 & AMD XP. Long, intense projects take forever so I figured out how to work most efficiently. :)

simple site for specs/benchmark comparison: http://www.hardware.info/en-US/productdb/bGVk/viewgroup/Processors/