When Some Bugs Take a Long, Long Time to Fix

February 13, 2017

The 10.2 Final Cut Pro X update was amazing. Gorgeous 3D text, drawing a mask, new scopes and more, it all looked good.

However, there were also changes underneath the hood that caused a few plugins to misbehave. Our popular XEffects Tech Transitions plugins have two transitions Line Split Vertical & Horizontal that draw a line through the frame and then split the picture in to two using that line. You can drag the midpoints to move the start and finish.

Well, you could until the 10.2 update when these points and the mask they map out didn’t function correctly! This of course was quickly spotted by our users and in came the emails saying things had broken. Sadly we had to confirm they didn’t work, no problem, a quick rebuild should fix things.

It didn’t.

Annoying, as we take pride on the quality of our plugins and put a lot of testing into a release, rather than just churning out a new product every week.

I don’t think we added up the total man hours put in to trying to fix this issue, but you can probably measure it in weeks and days. The effect had probably been rebuilt from scratch at least five times. Each time at some point, normally on completion, the masking error would appear. (The tracking of points in projects isn’t that rock solid in Motion anyway.)

Then, just before Christmas last year I had a bolt of inspiration on how to build the plugin differently. An hour later I had a new version. It worked like a charm first time.

I know how they must have felt at Bletchley Park when they cracked the Enigma code – the problem was finally solved after many unsuccessful attempts, late nights, and swearing at the screen. Have to say, I’m not the only one who is delighted. John Roman kept sending me emails every few months asking on progress and he was the first to get the news:

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Hey Peter!!!!!
Man, I can’t tell you how pumped I am to hear from you. I really thought you gave up a long time ago and were on a beach somewhere thinking no one really needs those two effects anyway. I will be counting the days until they are available. Thanks so much for not forgetting about this, and for letting me know a fix is in the works. You’ve renewed my faith in mankind! Thanks again and I look forward to using two of my favorite effects that NOBODY else has developed except Idustrial Revolution.
Sincerely,
John

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Can’t beat a satisfied customer.

It may have taken a long time to fix, but those two transitions are now back and working. Phew!
Don’t forget there is free trial of XEffects Tech Transitions for you to try out. Check out Line Split Horizontal and Line Split Vertical – they now function perfectly!

 

 

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