The Worst Piece of Software in the World

Maestro wrote on 7/8/2004, 12:57 PM
No, I'm not going to start a rant about Vegas. In fact, I very much love Vegas to the point you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

However, Sony's decision to bundle Graffiti LTD goes positively beyond comprehension. Anyone ever try using this thing for a credit roll? Their "text editor" is unarguably, undebatably, the most unintuitive--no, COUNTERINTUITIVE piece of user interface software I've ever encountered. What should have taken me 20 minutes to line up is now up to and exceeding a three-hour task, simply because of the complete inability to change the style of a piece of text without affecting the entire project. Forget undo--most of the time it doesn't work.

Be warned--this product might be fine for one-line text effects, but avoid it like the plague for something like a credit roll if you value your sanity.

So, although my hands are still shaking because I'm so angry and frustrated, there is a question here: The Vegas credit roll is too limited. Three styles isn't enough for what I do. Trying to sync up multiple rolls is tedious. Graffiti is unadulterated garbage for long text. I've tried a long event pan with a Photoshop file, but Vegas has a limit to the pan min and max.

Has anyone found a good, reliable, flexible way to do sophisticated credit rolls? A technique or third-party software perhaps? Any input is apprecitated.

-Brent

Comments

rextilleon wrote on 7/8/2004, 1:03 PM
Your opinion on Graffitti is one thing but I suspect that Sony went with the Graffiti answer because development of their own sophisticated titler would involve to many manpower hours and thus be pricey. Just a guess..
clearvu wrote on 7/8/2004, 1:46 PM
I installed Graffiti and thought, "Great! An extra software to accomplish even more!" NOT!!!! Tried to figure it out, tried again, gave up.

I do hope SONY comes up with their own version within the Vegas environment.
JJKizak wrote on 7/8/2004, 2:16 PM
If you have ever read Adam Wilt's stuff you will see that a titler is very
difficult indeed. I read it and I haven't a clue to what he is talking about.

JJK
winrockpost wrote on 7/8/2004, 2:16 PM
Anyone ever try using this thing for a credit roll?


Yep ,use it all the time.
Did you do the tutorials ? If you just opened up and tried to figure it out your hands are still shaking becauseyou are so angry and frustrated .

Boris is back asswards from most programs, once you learn it , very simple.
I'd suggest reading through the manual before dismissing it as garbage
snicholshms wrote on 7/8/2004, 2:30 PM
Ok, Boris Red and Grafitti have a different interface and require some training. Boris has a training DVD that walks you through everything Red can do. There is a lot of info that can be applied to Graffiti, too.
Also, check out Class On Demand's training DVD named Boris Basics, Tips, & Tricks by Chris Vadnais.

Vegas is growing out of the hobbyist market and taking on FCP, Premiere, etc. SONY realizes that Boris products produce outstanding results and are used by many video production companies.
Grazie wrote on 7/8/2004, 2:32 PM
. .. . :-(


.. grazie
johnmeyer wrote on 7/8/2004, 2:57 PM
I posted about this soon after Vegas 5 shipped:

Does anyone use Boris (that didn't use it before)?

The vast majority of the respondents felt as you did (and as I do), namely that this is a very powerful program that has a learning curve that is far greater than almost any program they have ever used. This steep learning curve makes it completely unusable for most people. This is especially true since its interface is so completely different from Vegas.

Bundling this program with Vegas allowed the folks in Marketing to put various check marks in columns when doing competitive comparisons, but obviously those check marks should have big, fat asterisks next to them.

Bundling this program is not even a decent stop gap. Vegas still sorely needs a competent titling capability, something that should be part of any mainstream video editing product (the days of using half a dozen programs just to do basic editing are long over, and virtually every project uses titles).
vitalforces wrote on 7/8/2004, 3:08 PM
I'd say consider Ulead 3D Production Studio. Cheap, quality titles, lots of presets, even export flash.
2G wrote on 7/8/2004, 3:10 PM
Maybe some people are asking for a complete rewrite. I would be satisfied (for a while..) if I could just put a stupid shadow on the text on the credit roll pluginthat is in Vegas now. Even the other media generators at least support shadow so you can read the text as the background varies.
Matt_Iserman wrote on 7/8/2004, 3:28 PM
Well, here's my conspiracy theory...

Sony, realizing that the titler was a bit weak, decided to bundle 3rd party titler that would make us better appreciate Vegas' titler.

It worked for me. Compared to Graffiti, Vegas' titler is a breeze, albeit a feature-limited breeze.

By the way, I did try going through Graffiti's tutorial but was annoyed by the inclusion of non-functional features in the tutorial. I had read the limitations prior to doing the tutorial but heck if I could remember all of them while doing the tutorial. Ultimately, I decided it wasn't worth it to jump back and forth between the tutorial and the list of disabled functions.

Matt
Earl_J wrote on 7/8/2004, 3:33 PM
"What about Bob?"

Baby steps... baby steps...

Imagine what a company that took Sonic Foundry to Sonic Fire to Vegas can do when they get around to the titling and text handling. . . just trying to keep my eyes focused on the entire race and the finish line, not just this lap... 8-)

Aloha y'all. . . Earl J.
"Just an old Maui boy with a poor sense of direction,
working his way home one state at a time;
currently working in the State of Confusion!"
***Fort Bragg, North Carolina***
winrockpost wrote on 7/8/2004, 3:37 PM
..............By the way, I did try going through Graffiti's tutorial but was annoyed by the inclusion of non-functional features in the tutorial. I had read the limitations prior to doing the tutorial but heck if I could remember all of them while doing the tutorial.

touché , good point.
stormstereo wrote on 7/8/2004, 3:57 PM
Hey 2G - Put the credit roll on a top track, click Track Motion on the track header. In the keyframe area you'll find 2D shadow and 2D glow. Check the box and change/move the shadow to your liking.
Best/Tommy
vectorskink wrote on 7/8/2004, 4:09 PM
I recently saw a 10min documentary made in Final Cut Pro, which had text throughout the doco. The text effects were AMAZING!!! I asked the creator how much time he spent on the text effects, and he said "a few seconds - they're all presets" I was green with envy!! The titling in FCP is brilliant. Here's hoping in the future with Vegas.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/8/2004, 4:28 PM
> Anyone ever try using this thing for a credit roll?

Same here. I use it for credit rolls all the time. I agree their tutorials are useless because they include features not found in the LTD edition. That's why I wrote my own Boris tutorial. Hope it helps some of you. (I'll try to add a credit roll tutorial soon)

~jr
Maestro wrote on 7/8/2004, 4:33 PM
Yup, did the tutorials. Yup, read the manual. I don't dispute Boris' results. I dispute their methods. My frustration was because I can envision some Boris developer sitting at his workstation snickering under his breath while designing the keystrokes to make things not work. In every text editor I know of, from Notepad to Word, pushing HOME returns the cursor to the beginning of the line. Boris sends it to the top of the file. Back asswards doesn't begin to describe it. I selected some text, changed the font/size, and it rippled all the way through the layout of the entire document. OOPS! Ctrl+Z...Changed the selected text back. Left the rest of the document alone. Tried to copy/paste some styled text, and got my text plus "%^&*()!@#$ABCDEF...." Again, undo took away the selected text while leaving the "%^&*" in the page untouchable. Totally f***ed.

So my issue isn't with the different ways it does things--it's with the unworkable code they've chosen to curse us with. I'm a software developer too, and if someone who worked for me wrote something as twisted as the Graffitti text editor, they'd never find his body. :)

-Brent
ken c wrote on 7/8/2004, 4:52 PM
I use bluff titler so far, works great..

ken
DigitalSteve wrote on 7/8/2004, 6:14 PM
Let me start by saying I'm just a hobbyist and mostly make slide slows intermixed with video for friends and family and school organizations. I also came from (I hate to admit it) Pinnacle Studio 8. It's bugginess drove me to purchase Vegas/DVDA and I never turned back. Vegas's lack of a good titler was a disappointment in an otherwise wonderful program. I was hoping vegas 5 would have a shiny new titller but alas, we got Boris Graffitti LTD instead. Even today, I will still use Pinnacle Studio 8 for its wonderful, easy to use scrolling credit capability. (It works reliably if you inport DV, overlay a scrolling credit, and export in DV). I also played with Boris Grafitti LTD and was disappointed by its unfriendly user interface and steep learning curve though you can get good results out of it with a lot of work.
wolfbass wrote on 7/8/2004, 6:20 PM
Any news on the scrolling text tutorial?

That was the only bit I couldn't get working.

If you're going to do one I'd sure be interested.

Cheers,

Andy
Jessariah67 wrote on 7/8/2004, 7:52 PM
The user guide for the "LTD" version is 666 pages long (ring any bells?). The chapter on "User Interface" is almost 100 pages long. I know people on AE who hiss and make their fingers into a cross when Boris is mentioned...

I downloaded the Woldform Wild FX Pro app and it does some nice things. Worth the $100...

I'm not a programmer, but I wonder how hard it would be to have a set of effects for titles that you could choose from, much like transitions or video FX we have now. That's really all that (IMHO) 99% of us would like to see.
BillyBoy wrote on 7/8/2004, 8:30 PM
The worst software ever and still champ is Windows. Millions of man hours have been lost due to countless numbers of blunders that STILL lurk deep in the code and probably has been patched, bypassed nixed, fiddled with and still its broken.
InterceptPoint wrote on 7/8/2004, 9:28 PM
Sorry to disagree with all you guys but I kind of like Graffiti Ltd.

I use it for credit rolls. It is simply a piece of cake to cut and paste in text from your favorite word processor and put the text into a credit roll container. It is light years ahead of the Vegas credit roll.

The learning curve problem is, in my humble opinion, highly overstated. A few hours is not an unreasonable investment of time to get to a basic capability. Just ask any PhotoShop user. If that doesn't work ask users of the all time learning curve champion: After Effects.

The problem with all of us is that we have been spoiled by Vegas.
stepfour wrote on 7/8/2004, 9:43 PM
I'm just one user, but I want to continue to call on Sony Media to write a text effects module for the next major release that will do us proud. No Vegas user should have to be "green with envy."
pb wrote on 7/8/2004, 11:07 PM
Simple, easy and painless. Version 6.5 and up have nice lower third templates as well. That's all I use the program for, though my wife's Premiere Pro 1.5 running on a Matrox X100 RT is pretty slick.