FCPX Screams of pain

[David Johnson]

Rick, I think you’re right that the answer lies partially with Apple’s marketing savvy versus Sony’s clumsy marketing, but I also think the answer lies partially with timing … as with Premiere and most other NLE software, by the time most matured enough to be comparable to or even better than FCP, FCP had already locked down a huge portion of the available market share so the combined disruption and expense of switching was often a deal breaker … even when the switch would’ve been to a better product.

[Rick Wise] “It’s similar to the triumph of VHS over beta. Betas was way better but lost the market to VHS.”

In my opinion, similar, but also different … personally, I saw VHS winning the consumer market to be more about costs than marketing savvy or product quality. By the standards of that time, VHS was good enough for the consumer market, but not good enough for the pro market so, for the consumer market, VHS offered a better balance between the cost and quality trade off. In other words, I ask myself whether movie rentals or the proliferation of home camcorders and VCRs (and, thus, the format used for each) would have taken off the way they did if consumers were expected to pay $20 instead of $5 for each movie rental at Blockbuster, $2000 instead of $500 for a camcorder and $1000 instead of $250 for a VCR? Probably not.

[Rick Wise]

John, if memory serves me (which it does not always do accurately) Vegas from the very start was ahead of FCP. And it stayed that way right up to today. So I don’t see “timing” as much of a factor, while marketing was.

Back then, Vegas was a small company run by some dedicated folk who probably thought they would make things better both for themselves and their NLE by selling to Sony. I’m not so sure that was a good decision. Any more than FCP being bought by Apple was good for FCP.

Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

[David Johnson]

You’re probably right, Rick … I don’t know Vegas’ full history and also don’t have the best memory in the world so I guess my theory was based on when I first became aware of and tried Vegas, rather than when it first became available.

[John Rofrano]

[David Johnson] “VHS was good enough for the consumer market, but not good enough for the pro market so, for the consumer market, VHS offered a better balance between the cost and quality trade off.”

One might say that this is exactly what Apple is doing. FCPX is “good enough” for the consumer market and there is far more money to be made selling 100,000 copies to consumers for $299 than 10,000 copies to pros at $999. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[Aaron Berg] “1TB G-RAID Video capture drive with firewire 800,”

Have you tried editing with a hard drive that is internal to your PC on the SATA bus? Does it still lock up? It looks like you are editing on an external drive via firewire. This might be a possible bottleneck. At a minimum, I would use eSATA if my drives had to be external.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[mike calla] “1. Would this apply to windows secondary display via a graphics card HDMI / Component out to an HDTV monitor as well?”

I’m not sure. I’ve never used that configuration. I wouldn’t use an HDTV as a monitor for color correcting because the manufacturers play all sorts of games to make their TV’s look good and you can’t really tell if your video looks good, or if the TV has applied some filter to make it look good.

[mike calla] “2. Is the dependent on the fact that you have a “Quadro” card?”

No. This works with any graphics card that has dual outputs.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Mike Calla]

Thanks John,
Right now my AJA’s go in to Panny TH-42PH10s, and JVC broadcast CRTs; definitely NOT your parents TV:) The Pannys i bought a while back on the advice of your Creative Cow cohort, Bob Zelin. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing an eCinema or even a Flanders display, i’m sure they are beautiful to gawk at but the pannys are consistent, i use them for broadcast and they’ve never failed me.

In the future if i get another seat here i’ll pick up another Panny TH-42PH10; – The reason i asked about the vid card output is because there is the another model in this line with HDMI in,(can’t remember the model#, doesn’t matter), and using the video card hdmi or even component out would negate the purchase of another AJA board.

Come to think of it, they have DVI inputs as well, hmmmmmmmm!?

Thanks again.

[No Vegas]

I tried what you suggested and it still stutters but doesn’t completely hang now. Seems a little faster speed and it’s able to recover from whatever the issue is. But still is having an issue.

UPDATE! Sony Vegas Releases the 10.0 E PATCH!

I had high hopes this new patch would fix my problems. I shouldn’t have been so gullible. Now, just dragging an SD .AVI file onto the time line CASHES Sony Vegas “Pro” 10.e

At this point I’m afraid Sony has lost me. I hung in there for 5 years with them but it’s time to part ways.

I can’t run a professional business with tight deadlines and paying clients on software that crashes more than a drunk teenager in his dad’s Ferrari.

Sorry Sony, I’m a business. I need truly professional software that gives me dependability and stability. You are NOT.

I’ll be looking into other NLE’s at this point, but I have invested thousands of dollars to get a Sony Vegas Editing system. I have over $7,000 dollars worth of work sitting here not getting done because I choose Sony Vegas. PRO you are NOT.

[John Rofrano]

[Aaron Berg] “I’ll be looking into other NLE’s at this point, but I have invested thousands of dollars to get a Sony Vegas Editing system. I have over $7,000 dollars worth of work sitting here not getting done because I choose Sony Vegas. PRO you are NOT.”

You need to realize that your problems are unique to your PC. Do you think any of us would be using Vegas Pro if dropping a DV AVI file crashed the program? I have no crashes like this at all and I would bet that whatever is causing DV media to crash Vegas might cause any NLE you install to crash as well because it’s not the NLE’s fault. I’m dragging and dropping DV AVI media into Vegas Pro 10.0e right now and it plays fine. No crashes. You really need to figure out what’s wrong with your PC.

Something you installed is causing the instability because no one else is having problems with DV AVI files. Do you use Nero? This is famous for messing up DV AVI processing in other applications. I would never allow that software on one of my workstations because I’ve experienced it myself. I’m guessing that some application has registered it’s own DV filter and it doesn’t work with Vegas Pro. You need to figure out what’s going on.

If you built your own PC, it could be an incompatibility between parts. Did your memory manufacturer test with your particular motherboard and certify that it works? Just mixing and matching components by specs is not enough. There are lots of incompatibilities between components that “should” work but don’t. I would never buy parts that the manufacturer didn’t certify as working together. So it could be lots of things… but if you think another NLE is the answer, then so be it. You just have to ask yourself, “why am I having all these problems when others are not?”. I’m not saying that Vegas Pro never crashes, but I get a lot of productive work done every day with the tool.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jeff Schroeder]

I had crash issues with Vegas 9. I did a clean install of Win7, disabled automatic updates, stopped connecting to the internet, and voila, no crashes. Get another computer for surfing and junkware, it’s worth it!

Jeff

http://www.narrowroadmedia.com