" So if it (v11) were working great and the forums were happy ... I"m confused, really really really confused."

The logic for me is that each new version brings new features and new complexity to code of the software. If you can't get the previous version right, your foundation for V11 is shaky from the very beginning. I'm not a coder so maybe this is where the logic fails but I see each version building on the previous.

My strategy in the past was always wait until the last release of a version and it should be good to go. V10 killed that strategy and now my future with Vegas is in jeopardy. Get 10 fixed and then we will see where we are when the last release of 11 comes out. It doesn't look good right now.

Erik

Soniclight said, "(I live on a fixed Social Security income, so I'm technically retired at age 57, used to be a graphics designer). I just love video making when I can get around to it."

I am on SSI disability and also on a fixed income. So I am technically retired at age 59. I used to do bench technician work on electronics.

How did I afford Vegas 11? The total costs was $139.95 for the upgrade. Divide that by 12 and one saves back $11.66 a month for a year. So I can now save for version 12.

I don't know how much you get but SSI usually pays less but it really doesn't matter. All one needs to do is save a small amount each month and they are good to go with the next years upgrade.

Yes, they are not always exactly one year apart but close enough for me to afford the upgrade each year. And there is a period of time the upgrade discount lasts so one can save a bit more if needed.

There IS always a way!

Thanks, VidMus, and quite true.
And while we're going a bit OT here, there is also this:

I've just switched from almost 40 years of smoking 1 1/2 packs a day to e-cigarettes (no smoke, no tar, no 400+ chemicals and one can move towards 0 mg. nicotine at one's own pace) -- and save substantial money. By substantial, I mean 10-20% max of what I used to pay for the nasties.

I haven't quit completely, but I went from 30 "analogs" to 5 within the first 48 hours and am slowly working my way down to 0.

So in one sense, it could be said that I may be a bit disingenuous about not being able to afford Vegas. But I also don't have dental coverage anymore now (got sacked in 2009) and so I have to pay stuff like that out of pocket. Ditto for my cat and vet bills. I love playing around with Vegas, but there are other things I need my moolah for too :o)

But right now, as stated, I don't even want to upgrade to v.11 due to the instability/bugs too many mention. And to be frank, I have downloaded Avid Studio and looked at Edius 6 during all of this. The former is nice, but still not Vegas Pro -- i.e. has no real Pan/Crop or 3D track motion -- the first of which I rely one a lot, incl. masks.

As Farss mentioned in an other thread, Studio is an impressive new up-tweak for that market and can work for basic prosumer editing; but my style requires a lot of artsy-fartsy and precise tweak-ability that such a program just can't offer me.

It's kind of like percussion/drum tracks I do in Cubase:

I bought EZDrummer hoping it would cut down time and effort. But I'm quite disappointed with the presets -- I like grace notes, rhythms that don't fit the norm, subtle cymbal rides, etc. So I have to return to the old-fashioned, manual way--create my own bars and verses almost from scratch.

Tedious but the craftsman in me just needs things to be exactly his way - lol.

But back to NLEs...

Edius seems to come far closer to Vegas Pro and it's tempting, but even its cross-grade offer is too expensive for me (USD$ 399).
Could I save up for it? Yes. But again, I have other life priorities to deal with also.

So I'll stick to Vegas for now.
SSI with or not withstanding.

Today's post from Byron K. "Vegas Swapped My Events" shows that the pain is still ongoing for users of V10. We know that Sony now has the fix for this major bug and we are still demanding that V10 get patched. Sony, just once, do something for no other purpose than good PR. You could really use some good PR right now considering the mess that V11 is. I think it would go a very long way in convincing a few people that there is at least some hope for the future of Sony Vegas.

My advice today to anyone considering using Sony Vegas is very different than it was a couple of years ago. I used to think I was the smart one using Vegas, now I honestly can't and won't recommend Vegas anymore. If you would patch V10, at least I could say 10 is good and they are working on 11. Now the story is the last two releases are not reliable.

Erik


Erik

Erik

And on top of that, if you want to start using Vegas now, SONY won't sell you the version that is stable and works. You can only buy the newest one.

i am erikd wrote:

"


Erik


Erik

Erik
"

A software issue?

PS: Sorry. couldn't help :- )

I agree. Im tired of all the crashes in v10

With Vegas 10 last week, I wasted a week of my life trying to get through what should have been a one-day project. The number of bugs was absolutely staggering. From everything I've read in this forum, Vegas 11 is no better.

From now on, I will only use Vegas 10 as a render engine, and then only when I absolutely cannot get things done in Vegas 7 or 8.

As for fixing Vegas 10 when Vegas 11 is the current version, there is certainly lots of precedent for that. Microsoft continues to provide fixes for previous versions of their O/S, long after the newer version is introduced. Eventually they cease that support, but certainly not on the exact day the new version is shipped.

I can still download updates and fixes for my older version of Firefox.

Many other companies follow this same policy of fixing major bugs in older products.

A corollary of this concept is that a company should never be in the position of trying to entice existing customers to upgrade by stating that the newer version fixes bugs in the existing version. Wow, talk about a great way to breed cynicism amongst all your loyal customers!!

Hello John,

You just hit upon the single greatest mistake that Sony Creative is making if they have any hope of Vegas being taken more seriously as an editing application. New versions should be for adding more features - like 10 did with 3D editing - not for bug fixes of previous versions, thereby trying to force people to upgrade in order to do their work. I started with Vegas on 9 and loved it for everything but AVCHD. I went to 10 just for better AVCHD editing, and have been rewarded with crashes and bugs galore in 10 - but at least it will preview AVCHD okay, which 9 would not do for me. And I don't want to have to go to 11 to fix 10. All it has done is make me consider going back to Adobe or trying Edius.

I would also glad to second the Sony Creative development team
to offer an update for Vegas 10.0e

You guys are on CRACK if you think Sony will release an update to an old version of Vegas! I'd much rather have them fix the myriad of bugs in the current version before adding more features and releasing V12! But I think that is wishful thinking as well. The marketing department wants to keep up with the joneses, not make bulletproof software. And even in features, Sony Vegas is loosing ground to Premiere. Adobe has really placed itself as the indie NLE after the Final Cut X fiasco.... It breaks my heart to admit that.

It's more like Sony is selling CRACK! Always promising the high you will get from the next version when the one you have leaves you feeling weak and shaky.

We are nearly five months past the release of V11 and it is nowhere near a stable release. FIVE MONTHS! I'm assuming that Sony wouldn't dare release V12 until NAB 2013 considering their current state of affairs.

So, how about it Forum Administrator... where does Sony officially stand on giving us at least one more patch for V10??

Forum Administrator...are you there? Does anyone from Sony read the posts on their own forum?

We hear from the Forum Administrator on average maybe 2, 3 times in a good year. Now that is real customer service.

Erik

"Now that is real customer service"

Erik, I understand and sympathise with your "heartfelt" comment, and wish it were different, I truly do.

However . . . . Being the ForumAdmin may not include "Customer Service" per se, that you/I/we seek, as part of their job? As you point out, having a slim presence here kinda indicates that? Yes? Notifications of releases, sure, and general tidying up of the Forum, yes. The type of "rolling-up sleeves" dialogue hasn't been my experience. So there has to be a reason. And here's the thing: Whatever the reason - and we don't know it - must be annoying for SCS too.

The "Ticket" is one way to SCS, and I would think that BETA testers would be having direct contact with the developers, for that kind of opening.

What more can I say?

Grazie

Grazie, with all due respect for sure, it is really a waste of time to defend SCS these days. I won't cross the line of potentially becoming an enabler for the lowered QC standards coming from SCS.

We who paid for V10 NEVER GOT WHAT WE PAID FOR!! I can't use it to get my work done. It really is as simple as that!!! SCS has breached my and others trust. We are NOW pleading with them to correct that error in hopes that we all don't have to move on. We don't want to move on but we certainly aren't being given much of a choice.

I've sent tickets to SCS in the past and NEVER heard back once. I gave up on that approach. As it turned out, the tickets I submitted were for the "replaced footage" meltdown but I guess since SCS didn't have anything positive to say they chose to say nothing at all. Sort of like how it is with the ForumAdmin...

We've gotten ForumAdmin participation in the past a few times when they were ready to announce an upcoming bug fix. Remember the lost text fiasco in V10? Now that I think about it, that bug was a real warning of what was to come for all of us. A real "what the??" moment which was indicative of the weak coding skills and general lack of quality control at SCS.

Nope, this is a smackdown, tough love approach. No enabling here. SCS, ForumAdmin, are you listening? Trust me, this is not a couple of whiners on the forum. Read the thread and you'll quickly see that. We want the V10 we paid for!!

+1.

Its amazing how the software industry has become an industry that knowingly releases dysfunctional products in the belief that it's completely OK, since you can always release a bug fix sometimes later, even without any apologies, and we - the crowd - silently just (have grown to) accept this. They rely on customer loyalty, customers are usually hooked if the have upgraded a couple of times, and invested a substantial amount of money in the product. It would not be business-wise clever to repair known bugs in older releases, if a never version is already out. All efforts (eggs) in developing it further (and fixing bugs) are in that one and only basket. They need our continuous flow of money, and nobody is willing to pay for JUST bug fixes.

This seems to be, not only commonplace, but also an accepted way of doing (software) business. A hardware company would immediately be out of business if would produce and sell comparably dysfunctional products. It's easy to understand that it is harder (and a lot more expensive) to repair hardware in the field, compared to just publishing software patches. It costs nothing for the manufacturer to deliver (downloads are cheap), and the effort, time an pain upgrading the products, is on the customers. This has driven the moral in the direction that it is completely acceptable to release (software) products even if the manufacturer knows that there are (even serious) problems in the product, at release time. Obeying this policy you as the end user cannot jump out from the wagon, since you will in that case never have a chance to have a bug-free version. In new releases old bugs are fixed sometimes (if ever), and new ones are generated. You simply must continue to upgrade if you want to continue to use the product...

It is sad that SCS does not differ in any way in this respect. I am totally frustrated because the errors in VP11 that makes it totally unusable for me. I have paid for a product 5 months ago, and still it does not work as advertised. I don't go into details here, they are all over this forum.

We can continue to daydream, but the business model SCS has adopted ensures that bug fixes in older version will NEVER happen. Normally I don't think too much about Microsoft, but in their honour I must say that I really appreciate how well they patch an repair older operating systems (windows) versions. Why is an OS so much different from a Pro end used application? Known showstopping bugs should be fixed in older releases! I thought that Japanese companies like Sony takes a high pride in their brand AND quality, but SCS seems to be such a small subsidiary to the main Sony HQ so they don´t care. Again, these are my personal speculations only. I have no hard facts. It's just how things seems to be and the general feeling after experiencing all problems. I agree that easily repeatable bugs that prevent the inteded use of the software should be fixed in older versions, no questions asked!

Meanwhile, how many SCS engineers (and months) do you think it still takes to fix the pan&rotate bug in VP11? Next release? When will that be?

I hate to witness the deterioration of a super-stable product (been there since V6), that I once loved so much. Still like it but the "love affair" has cooled down. Its like if your beloved wife would turn during the years into a nagging bitch... that happens sometimes... A bad analogy, but somehow explains my feelings - and has nothing to do with my current beloved wife ;)

Please SCS, pull your act together, and return our belief that VP12 could be someday an reliable and stable alternative. The grass is greener- (or less buggy) feeling creeps on me from time to time...

No criticism without some thanks: thanks for incorporating even older <2.0 Cuda GPU's on the list of usable accelerators (my Nvidia 8800GT works nice), if only you ironed out the bugs that prevents me from using it.

Sincerely,

Christian

@ erkid +1

Erik, you're not get an argument from me. I was putting forward a view that MAY be the case.

Cheers

G

Here's a thing seeing as how M$ keeps getting mentioned.
Well written code lasts a long time. M$ kept the NT Kernal for years and several new releases of Windows.

By comparison it's increasingly harder to not reach the conclusion that the Vegas base code is well past its use by date and is long overdue for a rewrite. Some of the bugs that rear their head just make me scratch my head as to how "this" got connected to "that". Code today, well for many decades, is supposed to be MODULAR. The whole idea of a code module is it can be tested as a standalone entity and a bug in one module connot flow through other modules. This makes testing and debugging easier. For very complex coding you can break it down into layers, kind of like an onion. Ppro seems written that way as it has a Hardware Abstraction Layer, works the same in AE from memory, you can literally pull out the inner layers of the onion and replace them with something else. Nothing like this seems to exist within Vegas.

This seems to mean every new release is a big task to write and a very big task to debug. A complete redesign and rewrite is expensive and time consumming but it pays dividends in the long run, assuming of course the business is really commited to being in the game.

I'm inclined to think this is where Apple got to with FCP. They realised the whole code base was too tangled and too much bolted on to go forward and it was time for a complete rethink. I had hoped this would have happened with Vegas when it had "Pro" added to the name. Too late now so maybe it's time to move from Vegas to Reno?

Bob.

Erik, I've noticed, and stated in this forum elsewhere, that on the Premiere Pro forum, hardly a day passes that an Adobe employee with PPro doesn't reply to the more pointed posts. It truly is a breath of fresh air!

There was a time, pre-Sony, when such was the case here.

I'm right there with you, Bob.

Subject: RE: give me your opinion please

Christian all of your points are accepted by me as being correct generally speaking but with SCS specifically, "this time is different!"

You wrote: "Its amazing how the software industry has become an industry that knowingly releases dysfunctional products...and we - the crowd - silently just (have grown to) accept this."

To a degree this was true of Vegas in the past. We bought V8, V9 and V10 with the mentality that we won't be able probably to use the first release but by the .c or .d release we should be good to go. That held true for V8 and V9 for the most part. But this time is different! V10 broke that mold and even still we bought V11 mainly because of SHEER NAIVETY out of just plain hoping for a better future with Vegas. I say naivety as I think we were all a bit naive when we bought V11 and did not pay proper attention to the alarm bells that were being sounded in buggy V10. They surely would dial it in for V11, right? They wouldn't screw it up again?

You wrote: "They need our continuous flow of money, and nobody is willing to pay for JUST bug fixes."

Wow, I really can't believe I've sunk to such a low level but if this doesn't demonstrate to SCS that I'm not a whiner and that I really do want to keep using Vegas, hear this: I admit that I when I read your comment my first gut reaction was, "I would pay a nominal fee if I KNEW THE BUGS WOULD BE FIXED!" Truly how sad and pitiful, look what SCS has reduced me too. Paying extra just to fix their screw ups!!!!

You wrote: "Please SCS, pull your act together, and return our belief that VP12 could be someday an reliable and stable alternative."

I say again, "This time is different!" We aren't going to bother with V12 if Sony can't get it right! Do you hear this SCS? We don't care about any new hype or any new features, or whatever other promotion you want to throw out for V12 if you can't deliver to us what WE ALREADY PAID FOR!!!!!

WE WANT THE V10 WE PAID FOR!!! WE WANT THE V10 WE PAID FOR!!!