Adobe's policy on lodging bugs needs reviewing

[JOHN MONDO]

I'm going to call out Adobe's feature and bugs reporting function. A system that relies on upvotes from other users. This is ridiculous. I understand the logic with features, but bugs are a completely separate matter. Every single bug in Adobe's software should be addressed and the method given to report them is woeful.

No logical layout - I've been part of a few beta programs in my time and the all had a better way of reporting bugs, with proper feedback from the development team and solutions published in a similar spreadsheet like layout for all those products. You'd lodge the software revision, the exact steps to reproduce the bug and the exact hardware specs of the platform you were on, along with OS revisions, graphics cards etc. 

What's more the current method does not seem to work. Bugs simply get ignored. We badly need a separate and proper reporting function for bugs. Features are a completely separate area and tehy don't belong together.

[R Neil Haugen]

No, they don't rely on upvotes to fix bugs. That's a features/UI changes thing. It's darn confusing the way they both have the same place to post, that's for sure.

Bugs are prioritized by several criteria, including the number of users affected. Some bugs have been fixed with a new dot-update in a few days, but mostly these days they roll out the fixes in the public beta releases, to test them 'in the wild'. In the public beta releases, there's a list of bug fixes with each update.

And of course, their blog page for Premiere always lists the bugs that have been fixed with each update.

Neil

[Peru Bob]

Many users automatically call anything that doesn't work the way they want it to work a bug regardless of whether it is truly a bug or just a user error. 

Assessing the number of users with a particular issue helps weed out the false alarms.

[JOHN MONDO]

I get that Bob, but if you make the lodgement procedure better then that actually helps sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak. If you make it a more formal process, where lodgers are forced to describe the repeatable steps to reproduce a bug then that is a massive improvement in itself. 

I've lodged plenty of feature requests over the years but only a couple of bugs and it's my firm belief that the current procedure and follow up by Adobe is sorely lacking. The latest one is related to hardware rendering being glitchy on the M1 Mac when you change the speed of a clip (and I own an Intel Mac as well, so I know it's specific to that). I have given the exact steps to reproduce but there is no follow up, no way for me to track that issue and I would be relying on release notes to know when it is safe to go back to hardware rendering. It also leads to a level of distrust in hardware rendering on the M1 itself as other users have had very similar, but seemingly unrelated problems.

The current procedure is simply not good enough.

[Peru Bob]

I understand your position and know it can be frustrating knowing whether or not a bug report is being addressed.

You may want to try the beta version and if the bug is still there, post about it in the beta forum.  Maybe it will get more attention.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-beta/ct-p/ct-premiere-pro-beta?page=1&sort=latest_replie...

[JOHN MONDO]

Oops sorry I realised it was Bob that made the suggestion for the beta version. Thanks Bob - good idea. Still think Adobe's bug reporting function is complete rubbish.

[R Neil Haugen]

Yea, it's funky not getting specific responses ... but the total number of posts the teams deal with daily compared to the actual number of team members ... means they only respond individually if 1) a specific post has data that they haven't got elsewhere or 2) is in a detailed account that provides data they need but they think further data from that user would be of direct use or 3) they want a specific project file or log to check something.

As there can be hundreds of posts on various things a day ... thousands at times ... yea, they're not going to respond that often to specfic posts. I think in my numerous posts over there I've had ... 3, 4? ... direct responses. And those were when I was the first person to post something that was suddenly hitting a ton more people and I'd given enough data that they expected asking further questions would get the details they need.

It's that ability to get the right details they need that is so often the key ... and the problem.

Neil

[JOHN MONDO]

Hey Neil - always appreciate your work. If it's a problem for Adobe then they're obviously not devoting enough resources to it. And mixing these to elements together (featuring requests and bugs) is just the wrong approach. I will take on board your suggestion, because as usual it's spot on, but I feel users are not really a priority for Adobe.

[R Neil Haugen]

Users in general are a huge priority ... users in specific, not so much ...

So the metrics determine the overall course of things. Indicating which parts of the app are heaviest in use, and therefore where M&E thinks effort should be put. You can have totally fascinating discussions with no clear right nor heads up/down about that sort of thing.

The really difficult thing about bugs/features is so many users call a 'bug' something that actually is functioning as designed, just not as they expected. We've had quite a few here certain that something is DEFINITELY a bug even though it's setup the way many others need it to be setup. As that user simply cannot understand that anyone would actually want the current behavior.

So trying to separate them ... means that someone will spend their whole time combing through the bugs to find features issues, and the features issues to find bugs. Yea, that's just gonna happen. So they gave up and lump them in the same site anyway.

Neil

[JOHN MONDO]

So the metrics determine the overall course of things. Indicating which parts of the app are heaviest in use, and therefore where M&E thinks effort should be put.

Neil

By @R Neil Haugen

And that in essence is my problem with the system. Rather than actually identifying what IS a bug, they instead rely on metrics to determine what needs fixing. Somone needs to actually test what appears to be a problem and find out if it's repeatable. I get it that Adobe has a lot of customers and because PC's come in millions of slightly differing configurations it can be extremely difficult to nail down things like random crashes. But when something is easily reproduced, then whether it's one user or a thousand it should be fixed. Because for every user that reports a problem, there's another thousand out there who look up a workaround on the forum and that's it. Problem solved. In my case it was software rendering that solved the problem or rendering the same project on my iMac when I got home. But it's still a fundamental problem with the the software.

[R Neil Haugen]

Um ... the metrics gathering and use is about what "pops up" the most. Whether it's bugs or features.

In other words, meant to guide them to the say, for bugs, things that affect the most users. Where that is a "problem" ... I don't understand. And hasn't a thing whatever to do with testing or attempting to repro.

Which happens daily. Both here and the public beta forum we've seen engineers posting about issues where they wanted say a project file or additional data, or perhaps a specific media file so they could attempt to repro in-house.

Or posted a thanks where they've 'now' repro-d the problem.

Neil