Hmm.

I won't bring up the details of that past, but my opinion is that as a web tactic, what he did really wasn't that bad, and is a common act in competetive online businesses. Douglas had every opportunity beforehand to register his name (I've done likewise with mine), and the .net association with the VASST is enough to know it's not the primary domain. I'm not saying it was morally right/wrong, and yes, the term is cybersquatting as you made note. I would never condone the theft/use of anyone's work with permission and credit, but the domain redirection is a rather common problem. Such as the gentleman who owned www.nissan.com (because it was in his name) and Nissan sued in an attempt to gain ownership of the domain name because they feel the name had copyright and brand recognition to hit over the namesake of the owner.

Besides, any web developer worth his salt can ensure that a search for "Douglas Spotted Eagle" in major search engines would return first and foremost his official website, even if it was a name as obscure as dse.com. Many SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) don't even consider the name of the domain as all that pertinent to the results you get) Things like link weight and popularity are often heavily attributed to high search results.

Anyways, my post is nothing in regards to Mr. Kleiner's past deeds or character, but a testament to the quality of the product he made, so hopefully we can keep the thread to that end.

I bought that series 6 months ago as well...and I use it all the time as reference material! I still can't figure out how Gary uses the Wacom for editing but he really likes it. I tried it myself - couldn't do it!

Good work Gary!!!

If you want to learn about who Gary Kleiner is, just look here.
That is a dissapointing story. Sadly, I have dealt with these types of people as well.


You can get the entire bundle which is all 9 volumes for only $132.

The above link indicates all 9 volumes are $399, a savings of $132.

I can see how the Nissan name was an honest registration, not someone looking to make a profit, so that's not an issue. "... not saying it was morally right/wrong...", that sounds like the attitude of so many today, the "me" era. Morally right/wrong SHOULD carry a lot of weight.

I appreciate you taking the thread further off track, Daryl, and in all honesty I'm from Generation X if it means anything to you (so there are still generations Y and I after me). But I'm not saying morality is not at stake here, I'm saying "Who's to say what YOU say is the moral thing to do vs. what I believe is what is moral" Morality is a subjective opinion and not an objective one, there is no final say on what is, and what is not moral, it differs on a person by person basis - like I said, I don't condone wanton theft of any copyrighted work for any reason.

Can we please not make this reference to Mr. Kleiner's past the topic of this post, as that this is derailing my thread, and my thanks to those who kept on topic.

But alas, there goes $50..and apparently VASST doesn't give a darn about taking care of its customers on this type of an issue.

I would disagree with that. I have ordered products from them in the past and on one occasion I had a bad DVD. I contacted them via email and was told they would replace it. No issue. Any time I have had a question I have emailed and got a response pronto- usually very informative and helpful- above and beyond what I asked.

I don't know about your situation personally but I know that being respectful, in all situations, goes a long way. Not saying you weren't when you communicated with VASST as I don't know.

As for the post made by JR, I would just say, put yourself in their shoes. If it cost you money and put your business in an awkward place, you might take issue with it as well. As for the content of JR's post, It is a link documenting an issue that happened a few years back that caused a rift in these forums and others alike (not to mention friendships and business ventures). Comments were being made about VASST that were simply not true.

How does that information relate to this post? JR wants you to know some background on the person who made the DVDs and how previous recordings were made (using VASST and ArtBeat material). If you don't like the message, you don't have to read it or take it into consideration. However, don't shoot the messenger!

j razz

For j razz, you can see exactly what I said to communicate with VASST in http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=618027&Replies=50 this [/link]link.

But I sincerely apologize to you Aegis; I did not intend to de-rail your thread.

TB

Hi Tom,

I do work with the guys at VASST, and I know that they would want to resolve your concerns and/or give you a refund, if you would only contact them.

Their contact information is found http://www.vasst.com/?v=contactusnew.htm] here

You can call them or email them from links on that page and I'm certain, that they'd be happy to help.

For me this has been a very well worthwhile purchase. Mr. Kleiner presents the material in an easy-to-understand manner, yet it covers a lot of ground. Not to mention that Gary has a very subtle sense of humor I find delightful.

As far as the ethical issues brought up in this thread, even if Mr. Kleiner has committed all the offenses mentioned here what it proves is that he's human---that doesn't make him a pariah or discredit the value of his work.

Since everyone thought my post was tacky I have removed it.

Sorry about the price misquote. I was obviously looking in the wrong field. My bad (not having a good day)

Apologies to the community if I started something I shouldn't have.

> Then maybe you could tell me how to receive a refund of the $50

Tom, I am sorry the product is not working for you but it was developed by a third party and they are trying to fix it. Contact our business office and request a refund.

~jr

I deleted my posts as well.

Have a great week everybody!

FrigidNDEditing...

Thanks for the post, but I am disappointed that it took this thread to get someone to respond. I have thought about it after reading your post and have come to a conclusion--I don't want a refund. I want your product to work, because I believe that it will be useful.

So here's what I want you to do--work on the problem, and communicate with your customers. Keep my $50, but fix the problem. You could have such a great product, and it would help many people...so fix it! It may not be entirely your doing, but tell us where things are at. How much time does it take to do that? You came into this thread after all heck broke loose, and if you had done that after JR told you folks about this issue a week ago, you'd have a bunch of happy(ier) customers. All I ask is that you deliver what you advertise that your product can do.

Look, I paid for your product because I needed something that could do what you claimed it could do. But it doesn't deliver on what you claim it will do. Fine. That's software development--apps are buggy. No newsflash there. So fix it and give it back to us.

We held up our end of the bargain by paying our money, now you hold up yours.

TB

TB, it's been a week since I last heard from the folks at NewBlueFX so I just emailed them again and ask for some resolution to this issue. I would also like the product to be fixed but if they offer up a refund instead...I'll take it and buy a product that actually works. They are very aware of the post where you and I were discussing our issues but as we all see - nobody from NewBlueFX ever made an appearance....I think that speaks volumes about what they think about us as a community.

I'll keep you posted if I hear from the NewBlueFX folks!

Thanks Dino... Now I would like to help Aegis to try to get this thread back on track--I feel badly that it got de-railed.

I want to reiterate that I very much like Gary's videos, and fully intend to look at buying his forthcoming DVD Architect tutorial. Of course I would like to see some information on the product, but expect he'll offer that up for us in due time.

If I don't hear anything within the next 1-2 weeks, I will email him to see when the release date might be,

TB

I've been exchanging emails with the founder of NewBlueFX and he assures me that he'll have a new beta of Upshift ready for testing within the next few days. This is regarding the audio issue that some of us are having after we upgraded to Vegas 8c. I'll keep ya' posted....

Excellent! Has he mentioned *anything* about the other issues--the ones mentioned in the other thread?

Thanks for the news.

TB

Thanks to analysis and advice from Sony, testing and feedback from Deanster and VASST, and hard work from our developer, we have the audio problem solved.

But we would always appreciate a few more testers, especially if you are having any other troubles with AVCHD UpShift. With this version, we have fixed quite a number of issues, but I want to make sure we have them all.

If any of you AVCHD UpShift customers would like to try this, please send an email to support@newblueinc.com. Please include your AVCHD UpShift serial number, and I'll send you a link to download the upgrade.

Thanks,

Todor

Email sent.

TB

I think this is the best series on teaching teaching video and I have exchanged email with Gary Kleiner personally.
I also have Garys previous series on Vegas4 and I have had vasst products as well.
I only purchase Vasst videos now for the speciality such as noise reduction.

As to issues between Gary and DSE (Vasst) since they have come out and publically resolved their differences and resolved their issues several years ago, so should we.

Well the only thing I'll add to that is that I've seen products both from Gary...and from VASST. They are both excellent, and I will eventually own each of them. VASST's Vegas series is $400 for the complete set of DVDs, and I simply did not know if I wanted to invest that much money in training when I bought Gary's product for $170. But in the past month since I have been using his videos, I have learned so much that it's incredible; so I am now fairly certain I will end up buying the whole VASST series as well. I have seen some of Doug's lectures on YouTube, and they are great. And since I plan to be using Vegas for years to come, I am willing to make the investment. Hey, these guys are incredibly talented Vegas users--why should we feel that one has the market cornered on teaching others to use it? They have different approaches to teaching the product as far as I can tell, and I think a person can learn a lot from each party. So I have no problem whatsoever owning two sets of learning aids.

And as for the new UpShift version, I have been using the new beta and can say that as far as I can tell, all of the issues I've had previously have been resolved. I am still testing and will do so over the weekend, but the new version of the application works much better than the version I bought a few weeks ago. All of the problems I experienced (and reported) seem to be resolved! Thus far, I am impressed. If UpShift has turned out to be as good as this new beta version appears to be, then a lot of people are going to be very happy with how well it works. I only hedge a bit because I haven't thoroughly tested the same files I had a problem with before.

For example, I batch-transcoded about 15 M2TS files the other night and then another 11 files the next day--however these weren't the same files I had problems with using the older version, as I simply need to get these files processed. But in each case UpShift worked perfectly, transcoding every file without failure--no freezing of the program during the conversion, and no crashing of Vegas while loading the resulting M2T files. And when I import the transcoded files into Vegas, the file names instantly populate the correct text box in the Import window, and the files load onto the timeline just as easily as any other HDV file, or the original AVCHD files. That was simply NOT the case with the older version of UpShift.

So I can say that things seem much better with this new version of UpShift, thus far. I will continue testing tomorrow, but judging from my early success...I don't expect any issues.

Great stuff NBFX/VASST!

TB

> VASST's Vegas series is $400 for the complete set of DVDs, and I simply did not know if I wanted to invest that much money in training

You may not need to. The VASST philosophy is very different. The first three volumes which are really the Vegas 101 "soup-to-nuts" training are only $99 if you by them as a bundle. I would start there. The rest of the training is ala' carte at $59 each. You only buy the volumes you need. We use to have a big multi-volume buy-it-all-at-once set but customers told us that they don't need all that.

That's the difference. If you are not interested in audio noise reduction you don't buy that volume (or you don't buy it until you run into an audio problem and then buy it). If all you care about after the initial 3-volume bundle is learning more about the media manager, then you just buy that one. This puts you in charge of what you want to learn. Each of those extra volumes is very in-depth.

For example, the basic volumes teach you DVD Architect and this may be all the training on DVD Architect that you need. We also have an advanced DVD Architect DVD that goes into more advanced features that you may or may not need for your work. The point is, you may not need to know it all or know it all in great detail. The basic training might be enough in some cases. So while everything costs $400 you don't need to buy everything. We will continue to add in-depth training on topics of interest to the community so it's a 'living library" of timely training.

Just buy the training topics you need when you need it. That's the VASST philosophy.

~jr