-
Pro 11…S.N.A.F.U. at Sony…My Epic Adventure!
Well after enough liquid courage (I.E. Bombay Gin) I decided to give Pro 11 a spin. I first did a fresh Win 7 64-bit install and made sure everything is completely up to date. Got Vegas installed and running…and that’s when the real fun began!!!
Tried the GPU acceleration I heard so much about… It took an hour to get Vegas to see my Quadro card. Turns out you can’t use the latest Nvidia drivers, you have to use an older one. Finally get that going, dump some simple AVI footage onto the timeline CRASH #1…Tried again, got the footage together and started a rough cut…CRASH #2…Auto restore got my close to where I was an got back to work. Once I got the cut down, I started adding simple transitions…CRASH #3… By this point I remembered that with Vegas I have to save after every change (Thus the warm and fuzzy moniker I gave Vegas MANY years ago “Click Crash” (You click, it crashes)
Started watching the transitions I just added…”Oh wait a second, what’s this?” I thought to myself, I asked for a simple dissolve, not this puzzle pieces transition…before I can utter the words “WTF”…CRASH #4… Recover and get back to work…All of my simple transitions have this obvious glitch…Do a test render, yep they are there… Spend another hour online making changes to get that to go away…CRASHES 5 & 6…
Okay it’s 3 hours later…My simple video is cut, go to render…CRASH # 7…Recover, hit the render button (I like the look of the new export window)…Try to render out to a simple AVI…Thinks for a minute…CRASH #8…Try again, gets halfway through…CRASH #9…Try again, gets two/thirds of the way through…CRASH #10…Recover, try again…get’s to the end…CRASH #11… I finally get the AVI to render, and I open it in Premiere to add some lower thirds (NO way in hell will I ever use Vegas for graphics!) Start looking over the video and guess what??? Every transition has either several frames of black, or a random piece of video in the middle.! I also notice that there are random blocks of missing frames appearing throughout the video… I go back into Vegas to investigate…CRASH #12…
That’s 12, count ‘em 12 crashes over three hours to cut what will probably take me no more than thirty minutes in Premiere when I start over later today…
It’s been what 5 years now? Each version of Pro is clearly inferior than the previous… Sony clearly doesn’t care & I’m out of patience (And gin)
Chuck
-
25 Replies
-
That’s a familiar story, though Vegas 11 was more likely to drive me to drinking after using it all day. AVI was a big problem for me with it. Once I used the AVCHD footage as it came out of my camera as opposed to converting it to Cineform AVI, 95% of the crashes went away. I still won’t use Vegas 11, though, for a few reasons-it freezes at 99% when stabilizing footage, NewBlue 3D text crashes constantly; I don’t like the new menu for rendering video, which makes me go through more menus to render how I want; and perhaps most irritating of all, since I have to deal with it constantly, is the Escape key no longer allows for continuous playback if you press it to exit full screen mode. Instead, it functions as a stop button, which can send my cursor back to where I started playing the footage. It’s a completely nonsensical change and is very frustrating, so I finally emailed Sony about it the other day.
Most ridiculous of all, it’s the only key (as far as I can tell) that can’t be manually mapped and changed, unlike virtually every other key on the keyboard in Vegas.
http://www.scenethroughglass.com
-
Keyboard shortcuts: Toggle external monitor preview Alt+Shift+4
-
That’s still inconvenient and doesn’t allow for me to edit as quickly as I can in Vegas 10, because I constantly switch from full screen while editing.
http://www.scenethroughglass.com
-
Here’s my question…How can a program… that can now handle freakin 3D and Closed Captioning not handle the most basic of Windows CODEC the .AVI?
I work primarily in .AVI and that probably explains many of my crashes..I also mix multiple CODECs…A major feature that Sony has touted for years…That has never worked…
I also have the (99% CRASH) when doing several different things. I realized what you are saying about the ESC button, definitely a frustrating change. Are you using a Shuttle Pro? I may be adding that to one of my extra buttons later tonight.
But don’t forget…All of these issues are either operator error or in our heads!
Chuck
-
There’s been a new Vegas team at Sony for the past few revs. Either they don’t know what they’re doing, just don’t care or both. For whatever reason they refuse to fix the problems and instead keep changing features that didn’t need changing! They seem to think that by offering “cool” new features for the marketing guys the existing problems will go away. My favorite response is always “can’t replicate the problem here, can you give us your system details?” The standard answer for every issue.. and it’s always the end users fault.
I’ve been using Vegas for 12 years now and the problems through every version of 10 and now 11 have gotten worse and worse with no help or solutions from Sony. WTF!?! I love that they’re still gonna have their big party at NAB… I hope there’s a bit of a protest movement from the crowd, maybe the higher ups will see how bad things really are. I didn’t even register for the event this year, it’s an embarrassing time to be a Vegas user right now…
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
What makes me more annoyed is that Vegas-when working-is such a good editor. It’s so flexible and easy to use, and I can cut a video so quickly on it. It’s the bugs and crashes that are threatening to ruin it for me.
http://www.scenethroughglass.com
-
Thank you Lance, I just want you to know that your post has given me a shred of hope…Maybe there needs to be an “Occupy Sony Vegas Booth” movement at NAB! Or maybe…they just need to start listening to their faithful core users…
Chuck
-
LOL! I almost used the “occupy” thing. And I agree with Angelo – it is a great NLE! I’ve used it on everything from promo’s to feature films and love it, but it’s become completely unusable for me. I’m hoping someone from Sony is listening and they can right the ship soon…
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
I’ve thought about making a video on Youtube in which I explain what I like about Vegas and why that makes its bugs and problems all the more grievous, especially with version 11 and avi footage. Maybe if we made some videos viral about Vegas’ problems, Sony would implement changes (and make me a paid spokesman). Red Letter Media got a lot of viewers when they released their 70 minute review of The Phantom Menace. I would be much less ambitious about the video I make, but I’d still want it to be entertaining as a video and effective as a criticism and call to action on Sony’s part.
http://www.scenethroughglass.com
-
I think it’s decided…You make the first one, and we will all make response videos!
Or you could create a YouTube user and give everyone here the user/password and we can all upload our own chapter of the “Saga”?
Chuck
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up