Sticky - My apologies to you and the staff at Sony

ScheffFrog wrote on 3/1/2011, 4:08 AM
Sticky,

I just finished reading your comments under the matter of using respect while here on the forum and I highly agree. I for one have used it as a place of going 'south' on a few small occassions and regret having done that. I am sincerely sorry.

However, where can a concerned user express frustration over a released product that has simply failed its expectations, and get a reply? Granted, I am one user among millions perhaps, but it is obvious to me that I am not the only one. This forum seems to be the best place to reach out assuming that folks at Vegas are paying attention to the complaints as well as to the compliments.

I use another software company, Cakewalk Sonar X1, of which I am informed frequently of updates and problems that are noted problems and also when an update will SOON be released. At present, there doesn't seem to be any communication at all from the folks at Vegas as to what may be going on with the V10 issues... and there are a lot of them.

Frankly, there are occassions where some new user will ask about V10 and whether it would be a good upgrade. In fairness to them I would reply and say "No, not at this time." Would that be a wrong thing to do? Integrity and honesty do far more for a company than a new package with a list of bells and whistles that sometimes do not work. Shutting the window where we can share, calmly, our concerns and wishes, as well as express to Sony the problems we are having is a necessary 'evil' at your end. You have to be willing to hear both sides.

Yes, I agree we should not use the forum as a place of Vegas bashing; hear, hear! Again, my sincere apologies for the times I personally have made snide remarks. But respectively, we need a place that we can tell Sony are honest opinions and be sure that we are being heard; and hear back from you!

As I can hear the frustration in your comments regarding this issue, I think it is fair to say that there will be some frustration heard in comments made about failed products. But I for one will certainly be kinder in the future when requesting help over problems I cannot resolve.

Sincerely,
Frogger

PS: Just so it is clear, I LOVE VEGAS and do see it as supreme in its field. Vegas 9x is working wonderfully for me at present and getting the work I do done.

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 3/1/2011, 5:09 AM
There are a lot of issues blasting out Vegas performance. The Cineform thing, the third party thing, drivers for video cards thing, drivers for motherboard thing, the Quicktime Pro thing, the memory thing, the page file thing, the external drive thing, the dirt plugged CPU fan thing, and the human frustration thing trying to figure out all the other things.
JJK
rs170a wrote on 3/1/2011, 5:39 AM
Steve (Frogger777), a co-worker uses Sonar and he's told me the same things you just did about updates, etc.
Needless to say, I'm very jealous as, IMO, that's the right way to take care of your customers.
Hopefully the recent problems with Pro 10 will resolve themselves soon as Sony has said that they're planning to hire more staff.

Mike
ScheffFrog wrote on 3/1/2011, 11:00 AM
Yes Mike... Sonar is unusually good about maintaining a good relationship with its users. I have been using Cakewalks audio/midi software since it was in a DOS format. (Yes... I am that old)... and they have always kept to their promises of making it better; and that have succeeded! I am completely dedicated to Sonar because of its audio/midi capabilities and wouldn't think of using something else unless Vegas were to incorporate midi into the Vegas Pro Video interface. Then I would have everything under one roof as they say. I would love that!

Software is dipicted in the market place as nothing more than 1's & 0's when it comes to returning something you don't think works or does not suit your needs. I think this is in error. Software, although it has no mechanical parts or hardware, it is still the 'workhorse' of any CPU. CPU's won't do anything without Software. I think software companies, and that would include Sony, should rethink the attitude towards how they sell and stand behind their product. I for one would have retured V10x because it just wasn't worth the money even though I got it at a discount purchasing just about every previous version Sony has ever made.

Sony took over a company's Noise Reduction software, which I bought because I used it before the Sony had it. But Sony made me [ay for it all over again when I went to use it in the Vegas interface! I think I should have recieved some kind of discount then, but decided it wasn't a big deal to buy it a second time... until recently when I found out that Sony has no intentions of updating it to a 64 bit operating system so I could continue to use what I believe is a great software! For me it is the mechanical wonder that has worked so great for reducing unwanted noise levels in many audio files.

Now, granted, I can still use it by having a 32 bit audio software editor available and I do, but I just think it is a poor behavior on Sony's part to not stand behind that product that I have continually used, paid for twice and the several payments I have given them to purchase the updates.

I come from an old way of thinking... that the sell of a product does not stop just because I or anyone for that matter has paid for it. I want to believe that the seller will continue to stand behind and believe in the product sold long after the sell. And... I am not saying that Sony has done this, its just that it doesn't appear to be the case, and because we are hearing very little from them, in fact almost nothing concerning Vegas 10x, it would seem like they don't really care.

With Sonar, we actually know that the software engineers are close to a brand new free download and they have already told us some of the changes they have made based on their forums request for certain things to be a little different. Hey, they are acknowledging us and giving us our wishes by actually telling us what they are changing based on our requests! That is outstanding service. Service that goes beyond the sale of the software, because they see the software as something more than 1's and 0's and as the mechanical softwware wonder that it is.

Finally, I agree with Sticky that we should not be ugly here, and I don't want to be anymore. That certainly does not solve any problems and in most does served to create more problems. But users speak up. Let you voice be heard. I do believe it would be fair if Sony Vegas people would give us a heads up to the problems we are having. Something of an encouragement that we are not going to be left waiting or standing with so many unanswered questions.

Sincerely,
Frogger
Andy_L wrote on 3/1/2011, 12:07 PM
Mike,

Where was the hiring more staff announcement? Missed it. ??
rs170a wrote on 3/1/2011, 1:58 PM
Andy, I couldn't tell you on which Vegas forum I read that announcement.
All I remember is that Sony said they were going to be hiring more folks in Madison.

Mike
Andy_L wrote on 3/1/2011, 2:03 PM
hopefully they're hiring coders -- not just more tech support people. :)
eightyeightkeys wrote on 3/1/2011, 4:02 PM
I just recently purchased the upgrade to PRO 10c from VMS Platinum 10. I'm sorry I did. I am going to attempt a refund...lol.

I have a professionally built i7 Audio/Video computer from ADK ProAudio/Video. They build rigs for U2, Shrek, etc...In short, they know what they are doing.

After 6 crashes in the span of a day, I talked at length with the head tech there and he informed me, at length, the numerous serious drawbacks of Vegas PRO in it's current state.

Entirely reliant on RAM and CPU power, virtually zero load on the GeForce 470 video card with CUDA technology, RAM scaling that does not work properly and causes CPU spikes above 4GB, extreme inefficiency in the video scaling, the list goes on and on, but, the worst of these is the crashes.

"Vegas has stopped working....Send...Don't Send"

I doubt that anyone from Sony reads these forums, but, I hope they do.
Steve Mann wrote on 3/1/2011, 4:33 PM
""Vegas has stopped working....Send...Don't Send""

What do you want Sony to do?? This is a Windows error. The problem is in your system.


I suspect that the number of people with problems using Vegas 10 is a really small number. Many of the complaints people like to throw at Sony are beyond Sony's control. Apple changes the MOV codec, and that's somehow Sony's problem?

People refuse to check and update their drivers, and that's Sony's problem to fix ... how?

Third-party programs aren't updated to 64-bit, and that's Sony's problem to fix ... how?

Third-party programs that worked with Vegas Version 8 or 9 aren't updated to work with Version 10, and that's Sony's problem to fix ... how?

When you have problems with Sony Vegas on your PC, I have to ask "what else do you have on that PC?". Quite often I find games (they tend to overwrite system DLL files), old display adapter drivers (the display looks fine, why should I download new drivers?), old or known hostile antivirus programs (Norton is frequently implicated in unstable systems), mixed memory (different manufacturer's memory sticks can introduce timing issues), overclocked systems that crash when Vegas pushes it over the line. And one of the worst - codec packs. These almost always replace the excellent codecs installed by Vegas with inferior and sometimes outright bad codecs. Basically, fix your own PC.

I can count the number of times that Windows crashed on me while using Vegas on one hand. And it's always been my error to fix, or bad media.

Oh, I have it on good sources (two Sony employees) that they, and other Sony employees do read these forums. When a potential bug appears, then Sony will commit engineering resources to fix it. (Does anyone remember how fast the Generated Text problem got fixed?) But when the problems are limited to a handful of whiners - and almost always the same handful - then I can't and won't fault Sony for ignoring them.

I used to run a PC tech support department in a former life. There's a simple test to define a problem as a bug. Is it repeatable? Can anyone else repeat the actions performed and get the same error? If yes, it's likely a bug.



Steve Mann
Andy_L wrote on 3/1/2011, 4:46 PM
"Basically, fix your own PC"

Vegas is probably one of the finest examples you can find today of an old, creaking software architecture that is patched within an inch of its life. It is also, for many tasks, an absolutely wonderful editing environment to work in--a sheer joy.

People need to hear both messages. Potential customers, so that they know what they're jumping into. Sony, so that they know what has to happen for this product to survive in a competitive and fast-evolving marketplace. And existing users, so that we remember what is good about Vegas--and so that we refuse to mindlessly accept what is not. IMHO.

Andy
Steve Mann wrote on 3/1/2011, 4:51 PM
"Vegas is probably one of the finest examples you can find today of an old, creaking software architecture that is patched within an inch of its life."

What evidence do you have to support this allegation?

Steve Mann

John_Cline wrote on 3/1/2011, 5:08 PM
"Vegas is probably one of the finest examples you can find today of an old, creaking software architecture that is patched within an inch of its life"

Ridiculous statement.
VidMus wrote on 3/1/2011, 6:25 PM
Right now I am using 10a and will wait for 10d to update but only after it has been out a while.

Note: If I go to options and set thumbnails to show in video events to all, Vegas will soon crash. A lot of resources used to update those thumbnails as one zooms in and out of the time line.

If I set it to Head, Center, Tail, Vegas will eventually crash but it will take a lot longer to do so.

If I get carried away and stop-start-go forward then backward quickly in a short time looking for a specific spot then Vegas can also crash.

All crash results are usually the same. Vegas is not responding and if I do anything a milky white transparent screen appears.

Same screen appeared on Internet Explorer one time.

Is Vegas at fault?

Is Vegas simply triggering a system problem that only shows up with heavy use?

As careful as I was in building this system for Vegas is it fully compatible with the needs of Vegas?

SCS cannot make Vegas 100% compatible with every machine out there as well as every configuration of them no matter how hard they try. And if the system itself is partially errant and heavy use brings that to the surface, is that the fault of Vegas?

In spite of all of the above, at the end of the day, the computer user crashes! Now who do we blame for that? Ask God for a refund? LOL!

I will now get supper and then go back to editing a Church video with Vegas.

Danny Lee Fye
www.dannyfye.com/lhrb
ushere wrote on 3/1/2011, 6:50 PM
88keys

there's something amiss with your pc!

i'm running win7/64 / 10c/64 / i7/920 / 6gb ram and other than the now well documented bugs, i haven't had a crash (unless using a couple of ofx plugins) in ages.

let's qualify that - i do long form doco, (and a fair bit of commercial work) - none of which is heavy duty compositing or fx based. i only have 3 point thumbnail on, and work with maybe 5 video and 8 audio tracks. my preview is set to preview auto (why people are so obsessed with full / best for basic editing is beyond me) and as stated, am running happily 8hrs a day 5 days a week.

no one is denying that vfw is out dated for previewing (scs NEEDS to do something about this!), and some of the above bugs have been pointed out for ages and remain unresolved, but all in all vegas is still my editor of choice, and being an indie i can choose what i want (thankfully!).

LivingTheDream wrote on 3/1/2011, 7:09 PM
Steve Mann: "Vegas has stopped working....Send...Don't Send"" What do you want Sony to do?? This is a Windows error. The problem is in your system."

I get that same error message/dialog box. It's an SCS box, not a Windows box. It provides a field to type in what you were doing at the time of the crash (quite a bit of space to do this, btw), a checkbox to display the error, and another checkbox to send additional system info to Sony.

I've been working with SCS support for the past few days on a 10c 64-bit problem (took them a month to respond to my request: submitted Jan 25, they replied Feb 25). I told Elizabeth (the person at SCS who is helping me with this error) that I had used that error dialog box to "send" the info to SCS. Here's what she said:

"When you send the crash information over, it simply goes to our development team and we never see it here in tech support. Is there any way you could copy/paste the error message in here? It will help me to pinpoint the fault module."

I was able to easily do that for her since it only took me about 10 seconds to make 10c 64-bit crash again.
dlion wrote on 3/1/2011, 7:15 PM
some things frogger left out about sonar. sonar 8.5.3 was great, so of course cakewalk decided a total redesign was needed and so became sonar X1.

the released version of X1 had so many bugs and so many things broken that X1a came out fairly soon. the user community has been up in arms, because cakewalk in fact has had users pay to buy a beta-level product. X1b will be released in late march, and yes, it's great that the developers are (belatedly) taking users into account...

but i guess i'm old school in thinking that, while a few bugs will always make it past any QC, software that is sold should actually work as it is advertised.

both cakewalk and scs have lost sight of what made them strong: they made software a bit differently, software that was more intuitive and easier to use, and just as powerful, or more-so, than the higher-priced competition. software that folks like us could actually use, rely on, to do our work. no more...

now, there is such market pressure that both companies rush poorly tested releases to market and expect users to find the bugs. welcome to the new age. i liked it better before, when a good day's work got a good day's pay...
eightyeightkeys wrote on 3/1/2011, 8:05 PM
I run a professional recording studio with the same computer using Steinberg's Cubase 64bit 5.5.2.
I can run 30 to 40 VST Instruments utilizing 8 GB's of RAM, plus 24 audio tracks in full mix mode all day without a single crash. I can't recall the last time Cubase crashed.

The first time I installed Vegas PRO, it crashed within a minute. This was probably due to the known issues with Vegas PRO + ASIO audio drivers as is utilized by my RME Multiface 2 PCIe audio card.

Again I'll list the issues that the tech informed me about while he was diagnosing Vegas & my machine :

- very bad ASIO support in the 64 bit version. We reverted to the Multimedia driver.
- very bad video scaling & unusually high CPU load for the video preview window.
- inefficient Dynamic RAM preview usage (video preferences) with CPU spikes and degraded performance with settings higher than 4GB.
- completely reliant on CPU & RAM with zero load to the video card. An extremely powerful NVidia GeForce GTX470 with CUDA technology is unusued.
- CUDA technology is only marginally implemented during render and very poorly so.

The list goes on, but, I've forgotten half of it.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 3/1/2011, 8:48 PM
hey 88,

Just curious about a couple of things here as I can't speak to everything...

"- very bad video scaling & unusually high CPU load for the video preview window."

If you are experiencing video scaling issues, it is because you are not doing it properly. If you change the resolution from the native format to a different format, match your project properties to your native format this helps with two things, one, it reduces load on the CPU because the preview isn't requiring a re-size from native clip resolution to project resolution for every frame it displays. two, scaling is better when you render to standard definition video. When you do this, make sure you are using the "best" method for for render ( not preview, as preview should be set to something like preview auto or in my case I usually use preview half ), because best method uses bi-cubic resizing and utilizes some kind of integration. The scaling results I've had from vegas in Best are comparable to AE in my experience if you know how to do it right.

"- completely reliant on CPU & RAM with zero load to the video card. An extremely powerful NVidia GeForce GTX470 with CUDA technology is unusued."

This is not so much an "issue" causing problems with the software as it is a known method of vegas. It has been this way for the entire lifetime of the product.

"- CUDA technology is only marginally implemented during render and very poorly so."

Cuda technology is only used for the encoding, and even then, only in the Sony codec, which is inferior to the mainconcept one in my experience. I keep reading your comments as problems with the software when they're just not features of the software, either I'm not reading it correctly or your perception may be off a bit.

That said, these are sure as heck things I would like to see done in vegas.


if you're using the 32bit version of vegas, you may find added stability by going in and modifying the exe file with a flag to make the 32bit executable aware of more than 2GB of RAM. There's a forum post about it somewhere in here, and you need to use a 3rd party application to modify the exe as well.

eightyeightkeys wrote on 3/2/2011, 6:47 AM
Thanks for your helpful comments FrigidNDEditing.
I appreciate your comments much more than Steve's condescending tone pointing a finger that I have "games loaded" on my machine, that "my drivers are out of date" (just loaded the latest NVidia drivers, but, what for ? Vegas doesn't use the GTX470...at all !)......the Quick Time is out of date.....(all updated to the latest) etc....

Video scaling : .... yes, my video is in native format....no upscaling there and I am set to Best for render. The best preview quality I can manage without stuttering is Best-Half....it's just fine for editing....except for the map names crawling, stepping...etc...

CUDA technology not being implemented is a "feature ?"......O.K. I....I.....don't know what to say on that one.....I was trying to find something clever...but....just not there. Premier PRO has Mercury acceleration which, evidently, puts Premiere on another planet as far as that goes.

I'm using the 64 bit version and I'll stick with that on the 64 bit end. If I revert to 32 bit it, will be with VMS 10 Platinum.
deusx wrote on 3/2/2011, 8:58 AM
>>>>After 6 crashes in the span of a day, I talked at length with the head tech there and he informed me, at length, the numerous serious drawbacks of Vegas PRO in it's current state.<<<

Sorry , but that's just plain bull$hit.

There are no drawbacks. I'm using and have been using Vegas since version 2 as a DAW and NLE and have never had any problems with it whatsoever.

I'm not saying that ADK audio guys do not sell decent machines, but I know they are full of it quite often. I did run into someone from that company on various forums and he always claimed how laptops with via chipsets or pretty much anything other than texas instruments would not work for serious production.

Well that's just more bull$hit. I get latency of 1-2 ms with as many tracks as I need ( Vegas ) and my laptop has via firewire chipset. To make things even more ridiculous it's the exact same laptop they used to sell when I bought mine and claimed had texas instruments chipset, well it does not. It's a clevo laptop and it did not come with TI chipset ( not that it mattered ). I bought mine from Sager so it says Sager on it, they just put ADK sticker on theirs, but that was a Clevo made laptop.

Same thing with another Asus laptop I have even with a crappy ricoh chipset. No problems on that one either ( latency from 2-4 ms even with antivirus and other crap running in the background unlike on the Clevo one ).

I don't know what you guys do with your machines and Vegas, but I've never had any problems whatsoever. A good laptop, RME fireface, Vegas any version, it just works.

>>>>This was probably due to the known issues with Vegas PRO + ASIO audio drivers as is utilized by my RME Multiface 2 PCIe audio card. <<<<<

And what issue would that be exactly? I've been using RME with Vegas and ASIO drivers for at least 4 years now. Nothing has ever crashed or done anything it wasn't supposed to do. If it is just that particular card, then it's that card's problem not Vegas'.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 3/2/2011, 9:17 AM
"The best preview quality I can manage without stuttering is Best-Half"

Why are you setting it to best? preview doesn't need to be set to best beyond checking chromakeying, and some fine tuned checking of graphic scaling.

There's a reason that preview quality is labeled preview :) - it should indeed be used to preview footage.

and yes, CUDA acceleration is a feature, for the moment Adobe is the only one that offers it even in this price range. If you wanna go into high end applications then it's much more common, but still a feature :)

It's good that you're using 64bit, my 32bit information was strictly a bit of information in case you were.

Dave
eightyeightkeys wrote on 3/2/2011, 9:50 AM
deusx....
let's make sure we are comparing apples to apples :

firstly, are you also on Windows 7 Professional, 64 bit ?
I installed Service Pack 1 just this morning to see if it would solve any of these issues.

Secondly, are you also running Vegas PRO-64bit, 10c (Build 470) ?

Thirdly, do you also have an Nvidia GeForce GTX470 ? Driver 266.58 ?

Fourthly, do you also have an ASIO card ? Which one ? I have an RME Multiface 2, PCIe ? Driver 3.0.85

ADK is a top notch company in my books...and it doesn't matter what I think, just look at their client list. This speaks for itself.

"And what issue would that be exactly?"

Why do you ask this ? Why don't you read my post before asking questions that you really are not interested in an answer for anyway ? I'll repeat the issue for you :

After installing Vegas 64bit for the very first time, instantiating it, setting up the audio and video preferences etc... it promptly crashed....within about a minute of loading up the video clips.
"Vegas has stopped working.....Send, Don't Send" (I still have the screen shots of the error windows....would you like me to email them to you ? After all, you called "bullshit" I have the proof.)

I'll also repeat for you that I run a professional recording studio virtually seven days a week with this very same computer using Cubase 64bit, 5.5.2, the very same audio card/video card running 30 to 40 + VSTInstruments, including Hollywood Strings, Symphobia, Stylus RMX/Omnisphere plus 24 tracks of audio in full mix mode with tons of plugs without a single crash.

This morning, I did a "clean un-install/re-install" following the instructions given in the Sony Tech Support pages for Windows 7 64bit :

http://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=4844&p_created=1259016132&p_sid=x*15pXnk&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NCw0JnBfcHJvZHM9MTcsNzM3JnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0yLjczNyZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWNsZWFuIHVuaW5zdGFsbCBvbiB3aW5kb3dzIDc*&p_li=&p_topview=1

This includes not only the uninstall of Vegas, but, the removal of :
-Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (SONY_MEDIAMGR)
-any and all Microsoft .NET Framework versions
-Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable software

deletions in the registry :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sony Creative Software
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sony Creative Software
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Sony Creative Software
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Sony Media Software

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sony Creative Software
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sony Media Software

actually, I deleted everything in the Registry releated to Sony Creative Software, Sony, Vegas, VMS,

installed Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 64bit this morning.

That's all.......and, crossing my fingers, so far, so good.
logiquem wrote on 3/2/2011, 11:38 AM
Why don't you want to try Vegas 32 bits exactly? What's the problem to have a dual install (32 & 64 bits)?
Rob Franks wrote on 3/2/2011, 2:34 PM
"- inefficient Dynamic RAM preview usage (video preferences) with CPU spikes and degraded performance with settings higher than 4GB."
Just curious... do you actually use more than 4 gig of preview ram and if so... on what exactly?