Very dissapointed VEGAS customer

Roger-Wikeley wrote on 7/11/2020, 9:49 AM

I've just bought Vegas 17 and so far I am *really* dissapointed by it.

1. The "free" Boris plugins installer is utter crap. You're sent 4 serial numbers and there's no way to use them. You run their installer and it only accepts 1 serial number. So you try running it again and enter the 2nd serial number but it deletes what's already installed with no option to actually install the supposed 4 "free" plugins. I've requested support from Boris but they don't reply. Utter, complete, garbage.

2. Similarly the "free" Steinberg software simply doesn't run. They seem to install and livence ok but when I try and run them I get splash screens then nothing else. You can see the programs are runnign but no GUI ever appears. Not really bothered about this as I probably wouldn;t use them much (I use Reaper for all my audio work) but again this is utter garbage.

3. Vegas won't import "MKV" files from my camcorder (Panasonic SD90). So I have to first use VLC to convert them to "mp4". n.b. When converting I use the options to copy streams directly (n.b. no rerendering/format conversion). So Vegas can obviously cope with the data but not an "MKV" contaier. Why ? It's 2020 and "MKV" is not new ?

4. Vegas won;t import "MTS" files taken with my friends camera (Canon HG10). If I try to drag and drop them onto the timeline you get the "unsupported" icon. If I try to use the "Import Media" function this crashes Vegas. "MTS" is supposed to be supported ?

5. Vegas is *very* crash prone. On the one video I have managed to create the program must have crashed at least 8 times in the day I spent workig on it. Luckily the auto save meant I hadn't lost too much but this is unacceptable.

So all in all I am really, *really* dissapointed in Vegas. Admittedly the Boris & Steinberg plugins not workign is not techically a Veagas issue but they both seem utter garbage.

If I was still within the "Initial purchase" window I would simply ask for a refund as this is not acceptable.

Comments

michael-harrison wrote on 7/11/2020, 10:04 AM

For Boris licensing try their forum. I've also found their regular support channel to be pretty hit or miss though I don't know how much that's due to covid. https://forum.borisfx.com/

Did you enable mkv reading in prefs | fileIO?

I believe you can use ffmpeg to re-containerize mkv and maybe mts without re-encoding though wait for others to chime in on that.

The crashiness of VP sucks, but there are solutions of a sort.

FAQ

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/vegas-pro-faqs-and-troubleshooting-guides--104787/

VP instability

Try:

The recommendations in the FAQ for solutions when VP is crashing.

Disable so4compoundplug.dll if videos are AVC https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/avc-xavc-s-issues-in-vp15-16-try-disabling-so4compoundplug-dll--108345/

A driver cleaning http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

If you're using an Nvidia GPU make sure you're using the studio driver, not the game driver. I've also found that the 451.48 driver is much more stable with VP than previous versions

Make sure your cache folder is clean by deleting everything in C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\VEGAS Pro\<version #> (delete everything with VP closed and use task manager to make sure it's really gone from memory). The initial startup will be kind of long after this cleaning but once it's up, restart VP again. Use task manager to make sure VP is completely gone from memory before starting it back up.

Try these tips too

Trim your project looking for fx combinations that cause problems. For example, Picture in Picture and Layer Dimensionality together are lethal on my machine

Chief24 wrote on 7/11/2020, 10:47 AM

Well, curiosity was wanting to "Kill the Cat", so looked up the specs for the Panasonic SD90.

Hmm, recording formats are either AVCHD or MP4/AVC.

But MKV? Nope. And, I had a similar Panasonic (HC-V100K), that shot in the same modes, except it did not do 1080/60P, only 1080/30i at most.

The only other format is for iMovie "iFrame", which you would not be using for a PC.

Not sure what "Free Steinberg" you are talking about either, as I have Vegas Pro 17 Edit (Bld. 452), and what I would typically see is that "Steinberg" might be a VST folder for Audio Plug-ins that Vegas Pro or Vegas Movie Studio would "Scan" during start-up of the program; provided they are in the correct "File Path".

Uh-oh, gotta go...the dog is barking at that "Cat with 9 Lives".

Reyfox wrote on 7/11/2020, 12:51 PM

I think he is talking about Steinberg SpectralLayers 6. As with any Steinberg product, there is a "special" way to install it. It certainly isn't easy, but mine is installed and working. That's not the fault of Vegas. The same with Boris. As for them being utter garbage, if you haven't used them, how would you know?

Crashes might be different, and there are FAQ's for that.

I use Boris Continuum 2020.5 with VP and work many hours on end and do not experience Vegas being very "crash prone". Does it crash? Yeah... but not often and I can work for hours. When I take a break, I let the computer take a break.

As for MTS videos.... the old videos from my Canon HF10 import just fine.

rraud wrote on 7/11/2020, 1:12 PM

Steinberg SpectralLayers is included with the Sound Forge Pro suite. The Steinberg folder in Program files (and Program files x86) is the root VST folder for many different VST publishers and usually created by default. It does not necessary mean it contains Steinberg software. Steinberg initially developed the VST format btw, so it may be a legal thing

set wrote on 7/11/2020, 4:39 PM

MTS is common AVCHD standard. In general, I still work with it.

What OS version do you install this?

I heard if you are still using Win7, this can happened.

Roger-Wikeley wrote on 7/12/2020, 6:08 AM

Thanks for all the replies ! I was a little bit p******ed off with Vegas yesterday (to put it mildly). Cheif24s correct though as the MKV files weren't from my SD90. They were from another source (friends camera output) and I'd just happened to put them in the directory where I'd put my latest SD90 recordings (which are ".mts" or ".mpeg" if you downscale them) So apologies for the "Bum steer" but I was annoyed at the time so not concentrating :)

But it is really annoying that Vegas doesn't support "MKV" container format but does support the audio/video streams in the container. As I said if you run the "MKV"s through VLC you can take the raw streams and wrap them in an "MP4" contaier which Vegas handles fine (exact same content, different packaging). So why can't Vegas read from an MKV container ?

In the end I wrote a small C# program which allows me to select any MKV file(s) and run them through ffmpeg using the following command line:

ffmpeg -i "input_file_name.mkv" --c:v copy -c:a copy "output_file_name.mp4"

Again that just changes the container without doing anything to the audio & video streams.

And I was talking about Steinbergs Spectral Layers and Wavelab LE. These were bundled with Vegas and just don't work. I've not got the patience to start doing the usual "have you tried editing the registry whilst standing on one leg when the moon is full" rubbish required with Windows. Plus my machine is a recent Windows 10 LTSC build and is running all the other software I use perfectly (Reaper, Visual Studio, Foobar, NI Komplete etc). . So I'm not going to start fiddling about with a perfectly running machine just to get some "LE" Steniberg software working.

In cotrast to every other piece of software I've installed they don't work "out of the box" so their software is at fault. Nothing wrong with my machine as *everything* else works perfectly. I've also tried Steinberg support/their forum and got no help whatsoever so as far as I'm concerned this software is garbage and the company are not worth dealing with. They've therefore lost any chance of me ever being a customer so it's lesson learnt, move on time.

As for the Boris plugins I've also tried contacting them and had no reply (3 weeks later). And would it be so hard for Magix/Boris to actually provide full installation instructions on how you're supposed to use the 4 serial numbers ? All you get is an email with some serial numbers and a link. The Boris installer is also brain dead as it deletes everything before installing. If it didn't you could just run it 4 times, enter each searial number sequentially, select "remove unlicensed plugins" after the last install and you'd be fine. This is really, *REALLY* bad programming from them. Totally inept user interface design.

However the Boris plugins do look useful so I'm now seriously considering using a crack. I always pay for all my software these days (I'm a programmer by trade myself) but if they ignore my request for help I have no moral objection to doing so. At least I'd then get the 4 plugins I was supposed to get - the inclusion of the "free" plugins and the reduced price in June was the reason I bought Vegas in the first place !

Anyway thanks for your replies. I'll look into the links for reducing crashes this afternoon/

vkmast wrote on 7/12/2020, 6:17 AM

Please note that posting "cracks" or links for such is not allowed on this forum.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/support/installing-and-activating-add-ons/

Marco. wrote on 7/12/2020, 9:07 AM

@Roger-Wikeley

Actually Vegas Pro 16 and 17 does support MKV container formats, you just need to enable MKV support (but this has already been posted by Michael Harrison).

Roger-Wikeley wrote on 7/12/2020, 9:22 AM

Point taken r.e. cracks. n.b. I didn't say I *was* going to install them. The point was I was so annoyed by being unable to install the legitimate plugins I was *considering* it. In reality it's not worth using cracks as they usually have hidden "features" anyway (i.e. ransomware, spyware or worse)

Thanks for the installation links too but I'd already been there and the Boris instructions simply do not work. When you run the installer you can only enter 1 serial number out of the 4 supplied and if you run the installer again the first thing it does is delete everyting. So there's absolutely no clear instructions on how to enter and use all 4 serial numbers. And Boris have not responded to my support request so I'm that annoyed by it I'm not going to bother with the Boris plugins.

Thanks also for the instructions to enable MKV support as that worked. But why is this not enabled "out of the box" ???

vkmast wrote on 7/12/2020, 9:48 AM

VEGAS Pro 17 introduced "experimental mkv support". Search (Find...) mkv +experimental for further discussions.

Reyfox wrote on 7/12/2020, 10:31 AM

@Roger-Wikeley last year I had the same issue as you. Trying activate the BorisFX plugins.

This is the email I received. Hope this helps:

Use this link to download --
http://www.borisfx.com/download_files/BCCOFX_2020.exe

Note that this installer will work with all three Serials, but you will need to implement all three of them one by one. To do this, after installing, go into the Start menu and in the All Programs/All Apps listing, and into the 'Boris FX Continuum OFX' folder - inside here the first item would be the one to prompt the Licensing tool again. Since your Serials only cover 3 Units, I would recommend, on the final Serial's Activation, telling it 'Yes' when it asks you if you wish to Remove Unlicensed Filters. This way, all of the Unlicensed filters/transitions of the Continuum package will not appear within your Vegas.