Version 11 Build 594/595 are out

[Steve Rhoden]

And then things get worse instead of improving.

Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
1-876-832-4956

[Dave Haynie]

I agree.

There was a time when Vegas was easily the most reliable piece of software I used. Even new releases, pretty much. That hasn’t been the case for awhile. Maybe there’s more pressure to get versions out at a specific time, rather than when they’re ready, maybe it’s lack of proper testing, whatever.

Regardless of the cause, this isn’t a necessary part of software development. You shouldn’t treat the customer as a beta tester. And yet, look at just one of my pet peeves, which occurred in Vegas 10. In Vegas 10, they used a new, private API to talk to Cineform. Ok, fine, maybe I get something out of that, I don’t know — the usual Video for Windows API was working just dandy for me. But they didn’t actually check for that new API being there, so when you ran with an older version of Cineform, Vegas crashed. Boom! Thus, two best practice rules broken at once: check the version, and offer the user a way to turn off that new but totally optional feature.

And so I updated Cineform… Vegas 10 still didn’t work properly with it. Neither did Vegas 10a, 10b, 10c… ok, 10c or 10d did actually, finally, open Cineform files correctly. Still crashed when rendering them. Jump ahead to the latest Vegas 11, and the Cineform interface is STILL screwed up; most recently, the video I render is substantially darker than what I see in Vegas. Only happens with Cineform, and I’ve basically moved on to using DNxHD for any intermediate video.

And this was all related to a feature that, far as I could tell, simply wasn’t broken in Vegas 9. And never did break in Vegas 9… I can render just dandy to Cineform, still, in Vegas 9. No problems.

This kind of thing is the result of insufficient testing, it’s not an inevitable part of the software development process. And yeah, I’m backing that with experience… I’ve been developing software, on and off with hardware, since the late 70s (I had my first commercial releases when I was in high school).

-Dave