@johnebaker

Greetings John

I agree with all you say, and the question is indeed "how to address users not reading the small print".

One answer may be that there is no small print that I can see. I've scoured the Magix MEP 2021 Site and can see NO mention of Intel being the only option required for hardware encoding the edited video or even that it is required, only that Intel is a minimum requirement, implying that an Intel chip is the lowest graphics requirment for using the program NOT hardware accleration - I stand to be corrected obviously.

As you already know, there are numerous references to video acceleration with statments such as:

"Version 2 of the INFUSION Engine now supports graphics cards by Intel, NVIDIA and AMD. An immediately noticeable improvement in performance while video editing is the result"

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but an integral part of video editing is creating the finished media. If so then surely MEP does fall short of the mark by not allowing Nvidia or AMD to be involved in the process (so to speak - I know it is really but not in an accerated mode).

Another statement is:

"INFUSION Engine 2 Movie Edit Pro now has a new engine – INFUSION Engine 2! This makes the biggest leap in Movie Edit Pro performance in years noticeable right away ....... INFUSION Engine 2 supports video acceleration for AVC and HEVC on Intel, NVIDIA or AMD GPUs with Intel Graphics HD 630, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 and AMD Radeon RX470 or higher."

The implication being that video is accelerated for the full process not just the cutting, pasting, transitions and effects etc.

I've read every single word on the the various MEP 2021 pages and if I were to buy MEP without knowing what I know now (does that make sense?), I would buy it firmly convinced that my Nvidia card would be used throughout the whole editing sequence, only to be disappointed when I came to exporting.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if Magix were to say that Nvidia and AMD won't help in the encoding department. They may well lose some sales but by omitting such information they surely lose future sales as the program does not live up to certain implications in the sales literature.

Apologies for the rant, but I always like to know what I'm buying. The omission of salient facts in the advertising blurb I can forgive but the fudging of salient facts in specifications / requirements is unforgivable. As I said at the start, I cannot find the small print that clarifies the requirments for encoding - but then again I've have only had one cup of tea so far.

Apologies again - AndyW

@me_again @johnebaker

Hi Andy.

I agree with you but unfortunately MAGIX is not the only company doing this type of thing or in fact the only type of product to suffer from advertising claims. I worked with advertising agencies during the 70s and I'm well aware of how close to the wind these people can get.

With all that in mind and if you do read all the advertising and can understand exactly what is being said they do not actually mislead.

Having said that I have found recording equipment stating it has two channel audio which was true but mono.

Cars with mpg figures you can only achieve in ideal conditions is common.

Amplifiers that massage their power output figures.

And the list goes on.

This in part is why research into any product before purchase is crucial.

Ray.

@CubeAce

I totally agree with everything you say. Car mpg figures, amplifiers that advertise peak power not RMS, wives that promise to obey (OK apologies, wrong on every level) are all, as you say, common advertising misleads.

With regard to MEP 2021, your comment "With all that in mind and if you do read all the advertising and can understand exactly what is being said" is I feel a leap too far.

When I read "INFUSION Engine 2 supports video acceleration for AVC and HEVC on Intel, NVIDIA or AMD GPUs" and "The new engine offers support for graphics cards from industry leaders Intel, NVIDIA and AMD", I think that my graphics card is supported when I use MEP 2021, not that my card is supported for some of the process. How is a layman to know otherwise?

The only clue given by Magix that Nvidia and AMD does not support hardware encoding is "The result is a seamless project preview without the need for time-consuming rendering or creating proxy files".

All companies sail "close to the wind" omitting facts and data to imply their product is the best.

Magix is no better and no worse.They do not make misleading claims in their adverts or marketing literature. The misleads come from important omissions in the requirement specifications that are there to help people decide if the program's for them.

Some (most?) potential buyers of the program cannot "understand exactly what is being said" and have to take things as they see them only to be disappointed later

AndyW

@me_again, @CubeAce

Hi Andy

I have to agree with @CubeAce, advertising departments, in general, can, and often do, sail close the wind in advertising literature.

. . . . Version 2 of the INFUSION Engine now supports graphics cards by Intel, NVIDIA and AMD. An immediately noticeable improvement in performance while video editing is the result . . . . .

The question for me is - is exporting part of editing? If the emboldened words are taken literally then no, by the time you are ready for export, the video editing part of the process has finished (until that little error pops up 😱).

John EB

@me_again

Hi Andy.

With regard to the finding information, my second image in the second sentence underlined in blue is the only reference I found, but is there to find. Eventually. With persistence. I agree it is far from ideal and I am getting away from your original point about the fliers and emails that certainly do lack any real useful information.

I also notice your reference to Peak Power as opposed to RMS values initially brought in by by Japanese firms in the 70s to mislead the public as their designs at the time could not keep up with European and American engineering.

How is a Layman supposed to keep up? That should come down to the regulators. Companies should be fined in my view and governments by nature are just too slow to react to market changes. Companies have already probably thought ahead and are ready to implement changes to continue almost uninterrupted as before.

A good for instance is my car. The British government a few years back stated that warranties on cars could not be invalidated by having serving done at non approved servicing providers. So what happened? My car now has its logbook electronically embedded in the car. Only dealerships can make entries. So no dealership service means my car has no proven service history. in a form of a physical log book. That in turn means no choice of parts or costs if I'm worried about reselling or warranty issues.

The idea of customer loyalty to any manufacturer or service provider is now a de-funked concept and probably always has been.

Technically you are only a customer at the point of purchase. After that you are a drain on the companies resources. Therefore customer service is becoming a paid for commodity for those companies providing premium service.

The rest are, as they say, 'You pays your money and takes your choice'. But remember to check the horse has a leg in each corner 😉.

Ray.

@johnebaker @me_again

Hi John.

Oh if you only knew!

In my late teens and early twenties I attended lectures by leading American advertising men. I learned so much about the system then that it has made me very cynical in everything I read.

If I made raincoats from cheese cloth I'd advertise them as having 'Water penetration is to a minimum for this type of material'. That may be obvious but the lesson is there.

It also ruined seeing a movie for a long time as all I could notice was the amount of special effects. I still pay more attention to such things now more than the plot and that's sad.

Ray.

@johnebaker

Greetings John,

If exporting is not part of editing, then why does MEP 2021 advertise itself as a "creative video editor" that exports as it's final stage - but without it's much vaunted hardware accleration for Nvidia? Probably to get people to upgrade to VPX, but I'm sure that has its fair share of misleading by omission requirment specifications.

I know this is all advertising semantics and nothing will change.

@CubeAce

Greetings to you also Ray,

I feel the same about regulators and governments. No-one that can do seems to want to.

I wasn't going to upgrade to 2021 this year, but as my graphics card died on me I bought myself (with a second mortgage) a top end nvidia card and invested in MEP 2021 only to find I could have saved myself over £350, (that's card and MEP2021) and bought a lesser card that worked perfectly(ish) with the previous version of MEP. That's why I was miffed in a post here some weeks ago, and even more so now that I keep getting emails asking me to part with more money for programs I don't want, when I've bought a program I do want that is only 75% efficient on my system even though I thought I understood exactly what was being said. .

As you say, 'You pays your money and takes your choice'. I would check the horse has a leg in each corner but unfortunately, being a simple layman, I don't know what a leg is.

AndyW

@me_again

Hi Andy.

I don't think anyone can be an expert on everything. Thankfully we don't have to be but we do have to learn to be good researchers and if nothing else I am grateful to the education system in Britain that at least taught me how to do that. Or maybe I learned to do that to compensate for the British education system. (whichever way around it was 😂).

Forums are a good place to start even if not participating. (No need to log into most of them just to read the content). Then specialist websites and magazine sites.

Even then there is still the pixie dust to contend with. No information on how processes are divided up into what is needed in hardware arrangements. On that front I can understand thinking a more powerful card should be better and it can be depending on how much into using additional effects and tracks and expecting the playback experience to still be smooth but that may just be the power users that benefit. (Those editing 8K footage for instance)

Then you have to start looking at competitors specs and their forum responses.

Having visited at least five competitors sites it would seem that all NLEs have their problems including Adobe and Grass Valley.

We are now in the age of being the beta tester. Computers components change faster than we can afford to upgrade and faster than programmers can write bug free scripts for. Too many variations in component specs and too many possible variations of components to test all combinations with a given software program.

In the end my decision to adopt Magix as my NLE supplier was purely down do workflow. There are things I still dislike about it but on the whole does most of what I want to do and all of what I need to do in a way that I can visualise and put into practice. Something I could never say about the photo editing program, Gimp.

Even my audio editor Cubase and Photoshop took some setting up to work well and try to master.

In that respect I have found MEP and VPX much easier to grasp. Whether that is down to using other non related editing programs I can't be sure but I find everything I need easily and understand most of the plug-ins even if I don't fully appreciate what they are capable of yet.

Yes I'm not a fan of the Magix push to inform me inadequately every other day or week but I've effectively managed most of those problems now and after going through a few upgrades understand what to look for in the Magix promotional blurb when it arrives.

One last thing.

If I have a program that is working well and does what I need for the equipment I have then there is absolutely no reason to update or upgrade it. If It's working that well then that version is probably the one most in tune with my current system. I think my current system will possibly cope with one more generational upgrade of MEP and by then the probability will be that if Magix software still heavily relies on Intel GPU usage that my current Intel 630 will no longer meet requirements.

That is of course if Windows doesn't update to a point that it beats Magix to it.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . Oh if you only knew! . . . .

You must mean all the hyperbolic marketing speak.

John EB

@me_again

Hi Andy

The only solution to the email flyers is to unsubscribe from them - there is a link at the bottom of them to do this.

In your profile settings you can also turn off any email notifications you do not require.

John EB