More first impressions...
You only get one chance to make a first impression...
I got home late last night from a couple of weeks holiday and was checking emails and forums etc and found that - finally - a new version of this software was released. Too tired to do anything at that point I waited until this morning to download and try out this new version.
My initial thought was "come back Microsoft, all is forgiven". Then it changed to a mixture of frustration and anger. My day job is as a software developer for one of the world's largest banks and I would be reluctant to even demonstrate internally software that is as bug ridden as this appears to be. I would be embarrassed to release it and call it version 1.0.
I've raised a number of support cases already but here are a few issues I've found, from trivial to major. These are all based on Windows XP so might not be issues for all.
That's day 1 of my testing. I've got 5,000+ images from my holiday to continue processing, so it's time to fire up the tried and trusted iView Media Pro. Let's hope that Phase One turn all these issues around quickly, and that when v1.01 is released we get another 30 days to review it and not just the remaining time from this trial. Otherwise my wallet stays closed for now.
Ian
I got home late last night from a couple of weeks holiday and was checking emails and forums etc and found that - finally - a new version of this software was released. Too tired to do anything at that point I waited until this morning to download and try out this new version.
My initial thought was "come back Microsoft, all is forgiven". Then it changed to a mixture of frustration and anger. My day job is as a software developer for one of the world's largest banks and I would be reluctant to even demonstrate internally software that is as bug ridden as this appears to be. I would be embarrassed to release it and call it version 1.0.
I've raised a number of support cases already but here are a few issues I've found, from trivial to major. These are all based on Windows XP so might not be issues for all.
- Open a catalogue and then close it and the catalogue name stays on the title line until you change focus to another window. However it does change correctly on the task bar. A trivial thing but indicative of sloppiness.
- I use the "Make XML Data File" option all the time, using the output to generate web pages etc. When I hit the OK button I get a message telling me the installation is incomplete and to re-install. I've done this and still get the same message. While most users won't use this functionality it's a show stopper for me. If it's not just an XP issue then it would suggest that this option was never tested. If it is just an XP issue then is suggests that testing wasn't detailed enough. When making a feature request some time ago I volunteered to be a beta-tester for anything XML/XSL based and was told my details would be passed to the test manager. I never heard anything more and the lack of comments on this forum and others suggest that there was no beta testing - and some of the bugs I'm seeing should have been picked up in unit testing.
- I approve of changing the file extension for these new catalogues - if only as it prevents corruption of the original catalogues. However what sort of testing was done for this? If I open an old ".ivc" catalogue it gives me a warning message (15904) that the catalogue can't be saved and advises me to use the "Save" option. First of all this option is greyed out. If I use "Save As" it only offers the ".mpcatalog" option but when I use this it asks if I want to overwrite the existing ".ivc" file. Even if I use a new location it ends up saving it as an ".ivc" file, even if I have made changes to the content. This doesn't make sense to me. It suggests that the only way to make a new catalog is to import files, so I import from an existing catalogue and can finally save it as an .mpcatalog file. A catalogue conversion function would have been useful.
- When I test adding new images I then start to get errors. The background import function keeps crashing. First of all I'm not sure why, on and old single core processor, it thinks that having 4 processes would be more efficient that just 1? Also these processes are CPU and memory hogs. Finally, for my RAW image files, they don't actually render anything useful. I do get thumbnails, and very quickly which must be from the embedded JPG preview. It then starts work on getting a better preview from the RAW data. Now the test files I have been using are Olympus ORF files from an E-3, which is a camera "supported" by Phase One. When this import "fails" - and I get an error message - then I get the generic Windows icon for this file type. When the import "works" I get a black thumbnail. This is using Phase One as the preferred rendering engine. As I'm testing on a Windows XP machine I don't have the WIC option - Olympus never released one for XP. This problem is intermittent in that when a render fails I can rebuild it, and sometimes it fails again and sometimes it works. If it is using the Capture One engine then it's not tempting me to change my workflow to use that instead of Photoshop. Note that when it fails it leaves behind an ImportSrv.exe process, tying up memory, which can only be killed via the Task Manager.
- I then try the DNG version of the same file and this quickly displays a thumbnail and then "crashes". It asks if I want to send an error report to Microsoft, which I decline, but then doesn't shut the program down. I have to do this manually, and it asks again if I want to tell Microsoft about a non-responding process. Re-opening the catalogue was confusing as it displayed the "locked" message behind all other windows i.e. not giving me any clue what was happening.
Has anyone using Windows XP got ORF or DNG files to import correctly and reliably? If so what are the magic settings you are using?
That's day 1 of my testing. I've got 5,000+ images from my holiday to continue processing, so it's time to fire up the tried and trusted iView Media Pro. Let's hope that Phase One turn all these issues around quickly, and that when v1.01 is released we get another 30 days to review it and not just the remaining time from this trial. Otherwise my wallet stays closed for now.
Ian
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Thanks for saying PC or Mac... wish more would. It appears this works on must Macs... but few if any PC's.
I've got real problems... I'm a temperary State (Government Hire) employee for 2 months with 2 weeks to go. One of my tasks was to find a suitable Library cataloging and retrival program, up load and catalog all photos... which I did to EM2 as I tested it on a 30 day trial... (You see the broad side coming right...?) and just as I give the go ahead to buy it (and 2 more liciences in 1-2 weeks) the very broken and 100% crash MP on a PC gets released and EM is taken off the market and purchase of EM is no longer an option (which I'm trying to change)... so we are up the creek without a paddle and now my whole department is on the verge of looking bad... not to mention my reputation. My bosses and mgt is already asking... do we really want to deal with a company that would do what they did and release a very crash prone product and what does this mean for support on EM? As an agency in this ecomony... we are wearing so many hats... we do not have time to be dealing with programs that should have never have made Alpha testing and are not funtional on PC's.
I have to make a decision by tomorrow... EM really fit our needs and then some, but if I can not buy EM liciences... then I have no choise... I'll have to recomend Picasa.
Marv.0 -
I think you summed up most of our "beta" testing thus far... this is an alpha release at best... hope the "windows" team gets the code from the "mac" team soon!... 0
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