"Vegas,as far as I can tell, is continually evolving."

That's a GREAT way of putting it Grazie.... and there have been some HUGE evolutions in the past couple of versions. Can't do that without some growing pains

For what you can do with Vegas today at the rather mild fee they charge for it.... it's nothing short of an outstanding program.

I now have Adobe CS4 at a cost of better than $2500. As a program set, it's a good system, but as individual programs go, Vegas is simply the better deal. The audio side of PP is just terrible when compared to Vegas. I can't even do proper AC3 without an ADDITIONAL cost of the Surcode encoder (which again is trash compared to Vegas's Pro AC3 encoder. PP's preview system seems to be a BIT better and SCS needs to work on that a little. With all the cost of PP and CS4 though, I THOUGHT I would see a better encoding quality in PP's H.264 when comparing to the Sony avc encoder. With the bit of testing I've done so far.... Sony's encoder (although not perfect) seems better. Adobe's Encore MAY be a bit more powerful than DVDa but not by that much so at the rather effective pricing of Vegas.... makes DVDa the better deal.

But overall Vegas is a fast, efficient, sleek luxury Lear Jet. The essentials are there (and more to come) and gets you to your destination....FAST
CS4 on the other hand is more like a bloated Boeing 747... The ride and comfort is there....comes even the full sized bar... which you need because the ride is MUCH slower. It also comes with a Boeing 747 price tag as well.

With what I have seen so far in CS4.... I have NOOOOO major complaints with Vegas.

"I did it because I have used Vegas since before it was called Vegas"

What was it called before then? I remember seeing Vegas 1.0 in the catalogs. Was there a 0. version that i missed?

Hi Kelly -

If you some day come to Copenhagen I will buy you a beer and a whole day in our Tivoli Garden - at least....

On my left I right now have a yellow manual describing a "SONY Screenblast Movie Studio" editing program.

The minimum requirements for this software are:
400 Mhz processor or above
128 MB RAM
a CD-ROM drive
and a 24-bit color display...

On page 13 such new and difficult topics as VHS,S-VHS, Hi8 etc. are explained.

This is what I remember as "before..." - There were several versions even before that - but at that time I grew up video-vise with Movie Maker and the all knowing "Papa-John".

Later btw, using Vegas, I got pretty impressed by another guru who could answer any question - and who used plenty of time helping all us newbies - and with great patience.
I recon he called himself something like, hmmm, wasn't it "Chienworks" ? ... :-)

Ahhhhh, the Studio version. Yep, i started there too. Video Factory 1, Video Factory 2, Movie Studio 3 (or Screenblast, depending on who you got it from, this was when Sony first started getting involved). Then Vegas Movie Studio 4. There was no 5, oddly enough.

The Pro version has always been called Vegas though.

"John - I hear you . . I hear you . . . You make me sound a rather sad man: "(

No, Grazie, I was just implying that you were an early adopter and fervent proponent of Skype.

Newbie, your Jedi mind tricks won't work on us.

What is a "Jedi mind tricks"?

Jøran Toresen

The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness

in other words, what your government tells you it's doing for your benefit....

The problem with Newbie's "you aren't paying to be a beta tester" argument is this: no software company will ever be able to figure out every bug prior to release. Mass amounts of users will find many glitches that developers were never able to find. In buying Vegas 9 right away, it enabled me to be one of the many that found out that Vegas 9 didn't work with Cineform, a number of us filed support tickets explaining the problem, and Sony and Cineform collaborated on a solution. That was a great help to me personally, and to many others, it seems.

If we all waited around until 9a or 9b before buying, you may miss out on Sony being able to fix issues related to your own needs.

CClub's 3 most excellent points - that SHOULD be writ large above this Forum

1] Out-Testing Benefits: Mass amounts of users will find many glitches that developers were never able to find.

2] Collaboration: In buying Vegas 9 right away, it enabled me to be one of the many that found out that Vegas 9 didn't work with Cineform, . . . . and Sony and Cineform collaborated on a solution. That was a great help to me personally, and to many others, it seems.

3] Tailoring to Needs: If we all waited around . . . you may miss out on Sony being able to fix issues related to your own needs.

Perfect CClub! Perfect! . .and that is why I have clasped onto Vegas as my NLE. I have not heard anything to contradict the statement that with SCS-Vegas, we have a developmental approach that is NOT witnessed elsewhere.

Grazie

>> no software company will ever be able to figure out every bug prior to release

This is very true, and that is why there is a wealth of methodology and a lot of tools out there that does most of the testing for you as a software developer.

My background is from embedded software and software for the telecom industry. Telecom is finicky about the quality of the software they buy. If you pick up your phone one day and dial 911 (even if you haven't paid your bill lately) and it doesn't work, you can sue the pants off of your phone provider. Also, a glitch that causes a 1/100 second of a delay in software is usually not an issue, if it happens regularly when you are on the phone you'll go irate since it is terrible to hear a conversation drop out for 1/100 of a second all the time.

It can be done. Not error-free software, but mostly error-free. Where the majority of errors are not only discovered, but documented with workarounds (until they are later fixed).

Regression testing, Test Driven Development automatic tools have two very important effects

1/ They find a lot of bugs
For example, an automatic tool that goes through all menu choices and exercises all of them with all options and border-values in the resulting dialog boxes should be mandatory. Since such tools are a dime a dozen (for a dev organization) anyone not using them could be said to be reckless.

This is why it is extremely rare that by just selecting a menu or dialog option, software crashes. Most companies use these types of tools. Most crashes in software today is caused by the software not handling bad or border-style data. That is harder to test, since it may be difficult to produce test-data that crashes the system.

Vegas 9 crashes when you select a menu option and a particular option on the resulting dialog box. This means one out of two things. SCS doesn't use this particular kind of testing tools - which would be worrying, or it does and it chose to ignore this simple type of error, even in the release notes. That is also a little worrying, but not as much.

2/ They prevent found bugs from coming back
This is vital. If you find a bug you create a test case for it, and this test becomes a permanent fixture of your testing harness. It is never removed unless the feature it is testing is removed from the software.

This is critical in regression testing. You will never re-introduce bugs in software since the testing harness will report it.

I don't know whether SCS uses such testing schemes, but the development that has been going on since Vegas 7.0d is not comforting to me. The symptoms are all there, and they are very typical. I like Vegas 9 though. It seems to move a step or two in the right direction. Perhaps the move from a stand-alone company to a subsidiary of Sony is starting to normalize. When small companies are bought by bigger ones, you tend to see this, and it tends never to get better under the new management.

If 9 is an indication, there are some hopeful signs - and a couple of others that are still a little worrying.

Personally I'd prefer a polished and better tested 9a.
On the other hand, I'd also like to see the gravest problems addressed as soon as humanly possible, Sony could then take their time with 9b.

What I find incredible is that sony released vegas 9 knowing that it didnt work with cineform avis properly or if they didnt know, thats even more incredible, as cineform must be one of the most widely used codecs.
I didnt need to buy version 9 to find that out as the trial showed it up fairly quickly.
This is the first time ive not upgraded straight away as version 8c is running fine.
until im convinced that all my plug ins will work (framserver etc) my money will stay in my pocket as a $50 discount isnt worth ruining the projects im working on and im not spending money on software thats going to sit unused waiting an update.
IMHO most of the issues are around third party plugins etc but surely sony must know that a vast majority of users use these routinely and its in their own interest to work closely with these people to ensure the product works Before release.
Yes take your time getting 9a/b right but the moneys staying in my pocket until its all running fine.

Sony is just learning to test software from the "master" http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090714/tc_afp/usitinternetsoftwaregoogle_20090714234132Google[/link]: "Gmail Labs was launched a year ago to let people tinker with software innovations being explored by engineers [at Google]. Enlisting users to try out software ideas is an extension of a practice referred to as "dogfooding" in which creations-in-progress are tested on "Googlers" in-house, said senior product manager Ken Norton. The phrase comes from the concept of workers "eating their own dog food" by using their own products.

"Rather than us having to decide in a vacuum or a conference room at Google, we were able to get millions of users trying Tasks and telling us how to improve it," Norton said. "That feature is much better now as a result."

Terje,

Thank you for taking the time to write that informative and interesting post. It's the best I've read in a long time.

Mark

"I don't know whether SCS uses such testing schemes, but the development that has been going on since Vegas 7.0d is not comforting to me. The symptoms are all there, and they are very typical. I like Vegas 9 though. It seems to move a step or two in the right direction."

It's no big secret that everybody wants bug-free software, and in the telecoms industry it's almost a must. But there is a price to bug-free software and that is a DRASTIC increase in the final price tag.

I'm not a big telecom software kind of person.... but I do know that the software that the industry uses costs thousands upon thousands of dollars. That money has to pay for not only the serious engineering going into developing the software, but also for the countless hours in testing and debugging.

That being said... sure.... it would be nice to have a bug-free Vegas the first time out, but you can be sure as the snow in Alaska that the price would be a hell of a lot more than what we presently pay.

blink3times said:

I am, kinda and there are another drawback, at least in the eyes of regular users, to that kind of software. It tend to be old fashioned, and rarely have all the latest bells and whistles.
Making even minor changes to the software on a switch can take ages with analysis, reviews and testing.

blink3times said:

One solution could be an open beta cycle, that would most likely have caught the Memory-, Cineform-, stuttering playback- and render hang issues, and a lot of the other annoyances and problems that have come up since 9.0's release.

Imho, 9.0 is a good Beta, but should have been released as the final version.

Even Microsoft have realized that betas help.

I'm sure Vegas used Beta testing with a small group of usres - hard to imagine tsome of these problems weren't discovered in the testing - more likely it was decided to release with knowledge there were bugs based on a schedule driven release date.

[i]"Cineform-, stuttering playback- and render hang issues, and a lot of the other annoyances and problems that have come up since 9.0's release."[/]

I won't get into debating this again, but i will say that it is not SCS's responsibility to test third party applications.

You do have a good point though.... the telecom industry (as well as any other commercial industry) does not upgrade to the same speed that Sony... Adobe... et al. It also should be noted that most of the hardware being worked with is certified in some fashion.... and quite limited. I for example get my HDTV through the phone line.... there's only 2 receiver boxes that are certified and sold/rented for the system our telephone company uses.

"hard to imagine tsome of these problems weren't discovered in the testing "

I'm sure that's true. On the other hand.... people don't all use this program the same way.... so what's a bug to you.... may not affect me at all. Then there are some bugs that will take eons to work out and they lose money in the process so they push it out anyway..... and they're ALL guilty of this. I know for a FACT of some bugs in Avid Liquid that have existed since version 5 and can now be found in version 7...... and they KNOW that these exist.

Hey thats nothing I drive a ford explorer I cant tell you how long Ford has been around 100 years and you know what i had to take my car in the other day to get it fixed, and not only that they put comuters on these things that cost more to fix then the whole car. Thats it I am switching to chevy I am sure they won't break down.