Sigh - Support...

[Mario]

<rant>

I use a software from a well-known vendor to produce IMatch video tutorials and all the cool teaser videos you can watch and which hopefully make many users buy or upgrade IMatch in sheer awe 

About six months ago I purchased the annual upgrade of that software. And, suddenly, rendering videos (creating the final output from all the pieces) took 5 to 10 times (!) longer. On my beefy computer.
Which does not mean a few seconds more, but 20 or 50 minutes more. Per video.

So, I've contacted their very friendly and quick support.

Unfortunately, nothing could be done. Known problem, no fix etc.
I had to revert back to the 2018 version to finish my work. Not good when you just paid a substantial amount (more than IMatch costs!) for an update.
In the months following, every time they shipped an update for the current version, I installed at. And, lo and behold, one happy day the problem was gone and render times of the new version were back to the speed of the two year old version. Yay 

A couple of weeks ago, a new update was released.
I get all updates for free during the paid-for one-year maintenance period. So I've installed it. Fool that I am.

Today I've opened an older IMatch 2020 video project to update it for IMatch 2021 (adding some new screen recordings of the dashboard, event timeline etc). Easy to do. Usually.

After the software opened my project, it needed to migrate the project. Newer version. Nothing unusual.
But, a message was displayed, informing me that I might have to update some annotations (which means the texts and graphic overlays you see on screen) in my videos.

And, sadly, bad news.
All of the over 70 text annotations in the project were broken, the text unreadable, vertically scaled 3 or 4 times the normal height, totally distorted.
I tried to change the font and other properties of the text annotations in a sad attempt to fix them. But nothing worked.
Only deleting the annotation and re-creating them from scratch solved the problem.
I was pissed. A 30 minute job suddenly went to a full-day job...

So, I've contacted their very friendly and quick support. As always, they responded within a few hours.
I'm not pleased. This is what they replied:

Thank you for contacting COMPANY-NAME Support.

Unfortunately this is an issue that may occur when upgrading projects from the 2019 version to the 2020 or higher version,
as we updated the annotation framework used to load them.
Unfortunately from what we have found, the best options we can offer would be to either open those specific projects
in the original older versions to continue editing the annotations, or recreating them in the newer version.

I am terribly sorry for the frustration.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Doh! This is not entirely satisfactory.

I can assure you that the migration framework in IMatch which runs when IMatch opens an older database is a large chunk of code, that takes care than your database objects, presets, annotations, Design & Print templates etc. are migrated as needed, while staying in perfect shape and perfectly usable. This migration framework stretches back to version 5, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and knows about and deals with hundreds of changes introduced over the years in the database, presets, templates and whatnot.

I'm not perfect, but I take great care for these things. And I would not tell users "Well, that's how it is. Use the old version. Go away now".
</rant>

[BanjoTom]

I think I know the "well-known vendor" you're referring to... and I'm still using their 2015 version, which does what I need.  If I'm thinking of the right company, your tale of woe makes me glad I have NOT upgraded for a long time...

[Mario]

I just wonder.
When I create an IMatch version and I see that, say, metadata templates or Design & Print templates are broken, I would not ship the product until I have a solution.
Just shipping stuff and saying: "Yeah, annotations are broken and font's are no longer working. But we use a new fancy agile annotation framework and this is so cool. Customers will understand and happily re-create all their annotations because we used the latest and fanciest programming stuff"...may not sit that well with paying customers.

My understanding always was to not piss off paying customers. May be I'm just old-fashioned.

[Jingo]

Yeah... not every company has a cracker-jack developer who looks for solid solutions before shipping new releases... and a super support forum with a solid userbase to report and help correct issue before shipping to customers.  Perhaps they will provide you with a refund and you can look elsewhere for a better product...

[Mario]

Perhaps they will provide you with a refund and you can look elsewhere for a better product...

You bet. And the sky is green. Where did product quality go...