PM... I waited a long time to report any problems- never talked bad about the product. But this upgrade (I have been through several) has been the most difficult and frustrating as far as crashes, problems and errors go. You can take what ever attitude you have - that’s your right. I also have the right to complain when software is released before it should be and I have to spend countless hours troubleshooting a problem that should have been caught in the beginning. Your comment about fixing "other" issues should make me happy is ridiculous. Those bugs should have been fixed before the product was released and not rushed to market to make NAB. I take this attitude because I do not use this product as a hobby, but I make a living using this product. The product's tag line is: High Definition. High Fidelity. High Performance. I agree with this comment for the most part- but High Performance means stability as well. I have been in this industry since the late 70’s and this problem of rushing a product for NAB release has always been an issue in our industry. It’s very frustrating when this happens, and it’s not just Sony. It’s Avid, Quantel, Descreet (Autodesk) and a host of other companies.

So I take offense to your “yawn” and not another Sony basher. I hold these companies accountable and to their word… we all should- especially if this product wants to play in the professional market. In my opinion- they do play in that arena. Many may not agree with me. I have worked on and owned Avid Symphony, Abekas D1 suite (and I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Sony machines-D1, D75, Digi Beta, D2, Beta SP….), Edit Box, Smoke, Avid Illusion w/Matador Paint and Elastic Reality- I mention this because there is not one thing I have done in those High dollar suites that I have not been able to do with Vegas. That is a plug for Sony Vegas not a bash.

So when there are as many bugs in a release as Vegas 6- you bet I need to hold Sony accountable and yes we need to complain. Some of these bugs are major issues. If these were minor bugs- I would have no comment. So please PM- you don’t know me at all- so don’t make comments like the ones you made- you have the right, but they are not appreciated. The crashes I referred to cost me a lot of time to re-do and re-do renders due to software bugs. Time is money…..

AZE, please re-read what I wrote. While 6b may not have solved your specific problem (thats even if the developers even knew about it and had it reported before) 6b fixed some things that other users had problems with. Should you be happy about it? But I bet MANY are happy about the changes made. Have you even seen the fix list? Here it is:


Notable Fixes/Changes in Version 6.0b
General
A bug has been fixed that could cause a crash after undoing a marker move if the marker had a long label.
A bug has been fixed that caused regions to appear as markers or at the wrong time when pasted into the Edit Details window.
The installation of some Adobe applications may result in users of some Sony Media Software applications to display the following message on app startup: "This application has failed to start because PRM.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." If you see this message when launching any Sony Media Software application, you can simply click OK and proceed. Vegas 6.0b includes a workaround to prevent this message at startup.
A bug has been fixed that caused the the Quantize to Frames setting to be bypassed when dragging and holding the Shift key.
A bug has been fixed that caused uninstallation of Vegas 6.0 to remove track effect and Wave Hammer plug-ins from existing Vegas 5.0 installations.
A bug has been fixed that could cause Vegas to crash if you deleted tracks while audio peak files for nested projects were being created.
The following settings have been moved from Preferences > General to the View menu, and keyboard shortcuts have been added for easy access:
Show/Hide Event Media Markers: Ctrl+Shift+K
Show/Hide Active Take Information: Ctrl+Shift+I
Show/Hide Waveforms and Frames: Ctrl+Shift+W
Show/Hide Video Event Buttons: Ctrl+Shift+C
Show/Hide Event Fade Lengths: Ctrl+Shift+T
Show/Hide Event Edge Edit Frames: Ctrl+Shift+O


Video

A bug has been fixed that could cause projects with 3D tracks to appear to hang during rendering.
A bug has been fixed that could prevent you from canceling a render.
A bug has been fixed that prevented track Shadow and Glow keyframes from loading properly from saved projects.
A bug that reversed the direction of the Zoom transition has been fixed.
A bug that caused Sharpen filter operations to be reversed has been fixed.
A bug that prevented animation of the Film Effects plug-in has been fixed.
A change has been made to nested projects to improve performance. Nested projects now inherit the Video Preview Quality setting from the parent project.
A bug has been fixed in the Cookie Cutter and Iris transitions that prevented guides from being displayed on the sliders.
A bug has been fixed that caused video event opacity to incorrectly affect opacity during a transition.
A bug has been fixed that prevented dynamic RAM previewing from working if the Sync Cursor button was selected in the Event Pan/Crop dialog.
Memory performance has been improved when using a large number of clips on the timeline that are encoded with the CineForm HD codec.

Audio

The Resample quality control on the Audio tab of the Project Properties has been renamed Resample and stretch quality because the setting also determines the quality of processing when time stretching audio.
A bug has been fixed that caused the Preserve pitch when stretching audio events preferences to be ignored when deselected.
A bug has been fixed that could cause unexpectedly loud output or popping from the LFE channel in a 5.1 surround project when Good or Best was selected from the Low-pass filter quality drop-down list on the Audio tab of the Project Properties dialog.
A bug has been fixed that could prevent the Low-pass filter quality setting from being saved and restored.
A bug has been fixed that could cause playback glitches when changing a track between Surround Pan and LFE mode.
A bug has been fixed that could cause file names to be truncated after recording if periods were added to the file name.
A bug has been fixed that prevented the Simple Delay plug-in from producing tails at the end of the audio stream.
A bug has been fixed that could cause glitches at the ends of the loop region during looped playback of 5.1 surround projects.
A bug has been fixed that could cause problems when rendering projects that contain UAD plug-ins.
Various fixes have been made to the Audio Plug-In window.
The record time remaining display now shows the time remaining for all armed tracks.

Capture / Print to Tape

A pre-capture dialog has been added to allow you to choose whether you want to capture DV using an external video capture application or SDI/HDV clips using the internal Vegas video capture application. If you always capture from the same device, you can choose to always use the selected method (you can change the method later on the Video tab of the Preferences dialog).
ADS Pyro A/V Link support has been improved.
A bug has been fixed that could cause a crash while capturing DV clips when the Media Manager was turned off.
A fix has been made to prevent erroneous Copy Inhibit errors on DV cameras.
Print-to-DV-tape operations from the timeline are now more reliable when prerendering is required.
The Print Video to HDV Tape dialog now displays elapsed time and estimated time remaining.
A/V sync has been improved when capturing from HDV tapes with discontinuities.
Audio preview performance during HDV capture has been improved for slower systems.
A bug has been fixed in the new video capture application that prevented the Length box from being updated when the Timecode in or Timecode out boxes were edited when capturing from a DeckLink device.
Buttons have been added to the Length, Timecode in, and Timecode out boxes in the new video capture application so you can specify which value will be calculated automatically while capturing from a DeckLink device.
Timecode accuracy has been improved when capturing from and printing video to DeckLink devices with support for Decklink.dll v4.8 and v4.9.
A bug has been fixed in the Contour ShuttlePro .pref file for external video capture.
Media Manager

A bug has been fixed that could prevent MSDE from shutting down while Sony applications that support the Media Manager are running.
The Media Manager now includes .veg files when scanning for media.
A bug has been fixed that prevented clips from being added to the Media Manager when multiple clips were batch captured.
A bug has been fixed that prevented files from previewing when the Save media-usage relationships in active media library check box was selected.

Scripting
Scripting changes have been posted to the Vegas scripting forum.


Im sure at some point you would have run into one of the problems that were fixed and would be here saying the same thing. One thing that I found amusing in your reply was that you have the right to complain about software being released before it should be. I am assuming you have no programming background but a bug free release is RARE if ever. But it seems like every release or fix update, someone comes here (Im not saying it is you all the time) and complains about something not working and how Sony should have held off on releasing it. If Sony were to hold off on releasing updates until everyone's issues have been fixed we would still be on Vegas 3/4.

Submit your error code to tech support and hopefully it will make it in to the next update. But I will bet the world that when Vegas 6c is released, within 48 hours someone will be here saying Sony shouldnt have released 6c so early. Looking at the LONG list of fixes 6b contained, the update could not have come sooner for many of us.

Ahhh...but PM, you would be wrong in the assumption that there is no programming background at my company. We have created many plug-ins for older software packages we owned. We write many specialty programs for our clients...so we go thru many hours and days in beta testing to make sure the bugs are at a minumum. To provide the list that you just gave as an example of fixes only proves my point. The bugs were numerous and the the software was not fully tested before it was released. I dont understand why you can't grasp that point. While I expect some bugs in a new release- you should not have the number that you proudly show and display as fixes that are a good thing! Please understand, I am on every Vegas user's side...but V6 was definately released way befoe it was ready and the proof is how fast the fixes came after the first release. It only proves the point they new about the bugs abd went ahead and released it anyway to make the NAB deadline.
Mike

AZE, I do understand what you are saying. But developing a plugin is much different than an entire NLE. Was Vegas 6 launched prematurely? Absolutely. But so was V5. One thing Sony has shown us is that they identify and fix the problems when they are notified. Heck, my Avid Xpress Pro 5 HD has way more bugs and new bugs introduced in each update which the programmers REFUSE to fix.

Question. Are you using QT7? I know that QT7 is giving me fits from the timeline if I use a custom template but I am more positive that it is a QT7 Preview problem more than it is a V6 problem.

Do you know that the problems you are experiencing are widely reported? If so, that would be bad on the part of Sony.
Otherwise, if it's only you that is experiencing them, then it seems excusable (of course, that's no consolation for you).

It seems that many users I talk to are having similar issues. V6 seems to be very unstable. I notice in mant threads it is recommended that you turn the number of rendering threads down to 1- so it acts like V5. One of the taughted benefits of V6 was faster rendering. I am not bashing the product- I am a strong supporter and user of Vegas. My comments are geared at holding the software developer accountable for their product and what they sell as it strongpoints. Look thru the many threads in this forum...over and over you will see reports of instability. V5 was rock solid...and yessss I agree the new benifits to V6 are worth working thru these issues...I just dont like having to troubleshoot a stability issue- that is simply not acceptable. Look at all the comments on Spot's benchmark thread. Almost every one experienced a major hault on V6 rendering the test veg file. It slowed down to rendering one frame every 9 or 10 minutes- that is a stability issue and not one where I am the only one complaining. I have been quiet through most of this- awaiting a fix for the stability issues and I have not seen one yet... I am tired of crashes in the middle of rendering, costing me hours upon hours of work. My regret was I did not not start the edit in V5...once ypur in V6- there is no turning back unless you want to start all over from scratch. And yes- I understand backwards compatability from V6 to V5 could never happen and that is not what I said (just for those who think I am bashing)...just a fact. You start in V6- you have to finish in V6.

Sony- Iam in the middle of buying a external hard drive to put my media on so you can test the file I sent that crashes V6 a few minutes into the edit. i will have the media to you soon...I was going to put it on DVD- but its over 60 gigs worth of media....

PM.... No, I am still on QT6, I know- Avid cant even produce an MPG1 of the timeline and they wont fix that oversight! I really dont want to be a complainer- sorry, I am just frustrated and we have kept quiet trying to work around the issues and problems. V6 is pretty solid for simple edits- but get into a heavy composite with many layers and lots of FX and you start rendering- it looks promising because it is so much faster than V5..and then it crashes! I am sure it will be fixed...and I am doing all I can with tech support to help. Heck, I am getting ready to dend them my entire edit that crashes on a new external hard drive to help out!
Mike

AZEdit, I am really sorry you are suffering from these problems. I am having a problem with rendering Quicktime files from Vegas 6 at the moment. Nobody else seems to be having the problem.

As for going back to Vegas 5, do you still have it installed on your machine? If you open Vegas 5 and 6 at the same time, you should be able to cut and paste most of your project from 6 into 5, and then resave as a Vegas 5 project.

AZE, no need to apologize. I was a bit crass in my initial response. This has been a rough week ( no excuse I know :-) ) and now my beloved state is going to get with another hurricane. The way it looks now Pensecola is going to get hit with at least a category 4 and its strengthing. Thats the last thing they need.

Thank God I am back in Kentucky for the time being but I just hate seeing my home and birth state get pummled and destroyed because of mother nature. Id move back there in a second even with yearly hurricanes.

Believe it or not, I think I am suffering some angst from watching the news on it and its bringing back very bad memories of the destruction we endured and making me relive it again.

I just pray God shows mercy on all in its path as this Cane has already killed 30+ people according to the news reports.

Good point Simon. I never even thought about that. I will definately give that a try. I appreciate the input. Thanks. Wish I could return the help with the QT issue. Since most of my clients are on PC, I generally render to avi. If I render uncompressed I can use my Meridien codec in QT for Avid user/clients. Many of my corporate clients use Avid and with the codecs you can provide an uncopressed or 2:1 file for them- since they are not resolution independent like Vegas (unlesss you have the Adrenaline). Either way if I need a QT for an Agency who has Mac- I render an MPG1 or MPEG2 (I have the MPG2 add-on)and then convert to QT using QT. I know that seems strange when V6 is supposed to render QT- but that is the long way around since I rarely need QT. Sorry...
Mike

Boy- I understand your feelings about seeing nature hit your home state...and I understand. I used to live in NY and Florida was the New Yorkers vacation spot! Beautiful place.... and being a Nascar fan- Daytona is a favorite place to visit. Lets hope all will be well PM. Take care and stay safe....

I've not had V6.0b crash but then I sure don't push the envelope but I feel there's something not quite right about it, kind of feels like a bicycle powered by a V8.
I sure hope they get this release nailed down a lot tighter and soon, you're not alone in having made a significant investment both in money and reputation. For me the speedup is great for what I do but they need to get this thing rock solid.
In the interim is there not anyway you can easily break the project down into smaller parts. I tend to do that as a matter of course, not becuase of crashes but just so it's easier on my old brain.
Bob.

Rather than copy/paste, why not just save the Vegas 6 project as an EDL, then open that EDL in Vegas 5?
AZEdit, I too, am not having the problems you describe. This is unfortunately one of the most massive problems with the Windows world vs the Mac world; since there is no hardware standard that anyone really abides by, there are so many potential system configs that it really can boil down to a single part messing everything up, or a tweak, BIOS setting, even heat messing with things.
On another note, even though it might be a different workflow, have you tried replacing the sequence as a Take?

The main problem with V6 is the memory specification. It should read minimum 512 for beginners, 1gig for casual users, 2 gig for moderate users, 4 gig for heavy users, and 8 gig+ for "balls ass to the wall" users.
Also should be warnings on putting oversize stills on the timeline. The memory consumption is the number one problem. The 4 thread rendering speed is dynamite. The sound sync, external monitoring, hdv capabilities are exactly what I wanted. Though it has some glitches, I remember people screaming for the release of V6. Next time cut them some slack.

JJK

Be aware that WniXP can only address 2Gbytes of RAM, adding more is quite likely to cause problems.
I've had no porblems with a few hundred very high res stills on the TL, it does kind of feel like wading through clotted cream but it gets there without crashing.
I have a gut feeling that an aweful lot of PC (and that includes Macs) problems are RAM related. As they squash more cells into the same space the probability of one of them loosing its charge increases. All that holds the data is billions of tiny capacitors.
Bob.

I'm still happily using Vegas 4 here. I've seen no compelling reason to upgrade. And I can't afford the time to beta-test new releases for software companies.... :) My www.tradingvideos.com 7-DVD release, authored completely in Vegas 4 last September, has sold nearly $240,000 in unit sales in 6 months (by the way I've been using customflix.com exclusively to distribute it, they've been fantastic to work with). Now why would I want to use a different tool? Vegas 4 is just fine, makes me money.

I'm using Vegas 4 for all my client projects at www.sitefomercials.com as well, it's a great tool. And I still use Windows 2000 as well. And cool edit pro, for audio editing. I'm not compelled to jump through the upgrade hoop like a lemming jumping off the cliff whenever a s/w producer releases something new, unless it's a) stable b) a compelling new feature release c) mostly bug-free for most users etc...

"old school's the best school" editing,

Ken

It's not a question of jumping off a cliff like a lemming. (besides, lemmings swim, not jump :-) )

It's more a question of whether or not you want access to the new features. For instance, in V5, the 3D stuff, the Chromablur, Acid capability, Mackie capability, were all hugely important to me.
In Vegas 6, the faster render times, the optimized HDV, improved scripting tools, nested timelines, and Media Manager were/are all important to me. And, compatibility with the rest of our studio system was important too. Nested timelines is one of my most fave features, I don't know how I'd get along with out it. Same with the new scripting tools.

If you don't need them, you don't need them. That's fine. Frankly version 4 has it's warts too, the question is whether you're finding them in your particular workflow or not. Some folks really stretch the application hard, while others barely scratch the surface of it.

At the end of the day, it boils down to what works best for you. If you're happy with V4, that's cool. But don't begrudge those that have moved on to faster, more creative tools in 5 and 6.
BTW, I'm still using Photoshop CS on a few of my systems, didn't want to spend the cash to upgrade all of those, myself. Only thing I'm missing is Firewire out that CS 2 offers.

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. I signed off last night and came back on this morning. I agree with the majority of the comments and yes I understand V6 is a software driven program. The individual set-up on each computer can alter how V6 responds and reacts. It might even be a software conflict. In order to help alleviate those issues, we try to maintain the systems we use for Vegas as an edit workstation with only the necessary tools for the edit process. I did not feel I was alone on the stability issue from all the other threads in this forum and that is why I voiced my frustration.

My work around has been to render the timeline in small chunks and marry the pieces together after that. Spot, I did not consider replacing the sequence as a take… interesting thought and yes a different workflow than I am used to. I still feel work a rounds are not the greatest means to an end…but until everything has been tested- it may be the only way for me to deal with it.

Thanks all…. Mike

Spot...what I did notice on a quick test was rendering the "Take" was going to take 1:08:00 and off the timeline it is only 30:00. But if it stops the system from crashing- in the long run it will take less time overall......

Good point Spot, I do want new features... someday I'll upgrade ....

Ken

There is no question that Vegas 6b is buggy, but certainly not as buggy as the initial release.

I will not go through the issues all over again seeing I reported them previously, however, when I can't take on to the timeline any SteadyHand or Red 3GL (and I think maybe Particle Illusion 3)rendered files and view them on an external monitor until I re-render them via Vegas, that is a problem. Yes, it is workaround-able, but the fact is there is a problem. This even happens with uncompressed video. Vegas external preview requires its' own re-render of each and every file.

There are still issues with X layers deep of nested project files updating as they are changed. Yes, it is work-around-able, however, the problem still exists.

There is still the issue of Media Manager crashing hard unless you go in and disable something that I do not feel like looking up. It's in one of my previous posts. This is also a problem.

This is just off the top of my head, and yes, all can be worked around, but it doesn't negate the fact that there are problems that *must* be worked around.

I am sure that they are going to get their "all thier ducks in a row," so to speak, before the next update release, but there are still problems and it getting really old.

It certainly seemed that Sonic Foundry patched thier releases much faster than Sony, but I cannot prove that.

There is no question that Vegas 6b is buggy, but certainly not as buggy as the initial release.

I will not go through the issues all over again seeing I reported them previously, however, when I can't take on to the timeline any SteadyHand or Red 3GL (and I think maybe Particle Illusion 3)rendered files and view them on an external monitor until I re-render them via Vegas, that is a problem. Yes, it is workaround-able, but the fact is there is a problem. This even happens with uncompressed video. Vegas external preview requires its' own re-render of each and every file.

There are still issues with X layers deep of nested project files updating as they are changed. Yes, it is work-around-able, however, the problem still exists.

There is still the issue of Media Manager crashing hard unless you go in and disable something that I do not feel like looking up. It's in one of my previous posts. This is also a problem.

This is just off the top of my head, and yes, all can be worked around, but it doesn't negate the fact that there are problems that *must* be worked around.

I am sure that they are going to get their "all their ducks in a row," so to speak, before the next update release, but there are still problems and it getting really old.

It certainly seemed that Sonic Foundry patched their releases much faster than Sony, but I cannot prove that.