Report a bug button

Please consider adding a button to report a bug from within DaVinci Resolve, not after a crash, but for cases when something else doesn't work as expected.

Rationale: some bugs seems to persist in the software for quite a long time, perhaps they don't get enough priority because they're under-reported. The current web form asks for too many personal details for the purpose of sending a bug report, which have to be filled every time, thus discouraging its use. It is also possible to report bugs on this forum and many users do, however from my point of view such reports only occasionally receive any kind of acknowledgement from the developers, which is understandable since this is primarily a community forum, but still discouraging. By that I'm not trying to imply the forums are useless, they're not, in fact I've found some great pieces of advice here from the community members, but I find it a not very suitable channel for the purpose of a routine bug reporting.

If a bug report form were to built into DaVinci Resolve, it would suffice for it to be much simpler, at the same time it would allow to send along any system specs and possibly further context information such as a UI log. Personal information can be retrieved from a registered serial number if needed, no need to fill it in manually. On the other hand I understand there may be a concern of having to deal with an increased amount of bug reports, but bug trackers nowadays should be able to deal with duplicate reports more or less automatically if it's anything decent. In the end, I believe if it helps the dev team to receive more accurate and timely information about the issues users are facing and manage to fix them, the more happy the users will be

+1 from me. I am finding many bugs which I want to report, but it's too difficult to report, so I don't report. I just found a bug where with the 18.0.2 updates (to keyboard editor too), when I go back to source tape in the cut page, it only loads the in-out range in the tape and I can't clear the in out points to see the whole source tape again.

+1
Like other software, if it's hang or crash then pop up independent will apear telling to send report.

considering that in a professional environment NONE of the machine should be connected directly to internet...

this is a no for me....

+1


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considering that in a professional environment NONE of the machine should be connected directly to internet...

this is a no for me....

I don't think this would preclude other means of reporting. So you wouldn't have to use it. Is it still a no for you even then?


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When I think of the prevalence of reported bugs that turn out to be operator issues, I imagine BMD being flooded with reports by inexperienced users who make a mistake or misunderstand how something works.

I'm trying to imagine how BMD would be able to sort out the real bugs.
At the moment the users interact on the forum which commonly results in a solution without BMD being involved.

I'm neither for or against the idea. Interestingly, no other editing app has this.

considering that in a professional environment NONE of the machine should be connected directly to internet...

this is a no for me....

Too late!
Resolve already supports many functions that require direct internet connection.

considering that in a professional environment NONE of the machine should be connected directly to internet...

this is a no for me....

Too late!
Resolve already supports many functions that require direct internet connection.

i know that... I just want the coding time on something else first....

I think feature desirability and coding time allocation should be kept separate on the forum. As in it's fine if one wants the time spent elsewhere but please say so rather than just voting no to the feature. There's a big difference between that and thinking adding the feature would actually make Resolve worse.


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The current web form asks for too many personal details for the purpose of sending a bug report, which have to be filled every time, thus discouraging its use. It is also possible to report bugs on this forum and many users do, however from my point of view such reports only occasionally receive any kind of acknowledgement from the developers

Reporting bugs in the forums works, believe me, and the forum allows for embedding images and links to videos to help show the cause. If it cannot be recreated because people reporting them do not include enough info, it isn't likely to be fixed. When bugs are reported on the forums, if there isn't enough info, other users can point this out. They can also highlight possible user error. None of this would happen with a 'report a bug' feature. It would instead be a great way to ensure that bugs are less likely to be fixed.

The current web form asks for too many personal details for the purpose of sending a bug report

Yep

The last time I reported a bug (with logs), I sent it directly by PM to a mod.

Instead of just transferring my message to the people managing this stuff (I provided a link for the logs), he told me to post it on the forum so the devs can look at it.

It was the last time I reported a bug. I looked at what's in the logs, and there are too much personal information. Regarding the system, the files opened, the names of projects, of video files. Things I don't share publicly, but we "have to" post these logs on a forum accessible by anyone.

Makes no sense at all for a big company like BMD.

Maybe it works for them, but I never saw something like this for a big company, asking users to post logs of their machines on a public forum. Especially when sometimes they ask for more than the logs created by Davinci Resolve, the system logs.

Yes, names of videos files can contain names for project that shouldn't be disclosed, same with dates...
But it can be anything else that can disclose things nobody would ever share to anyone.

Then there is the name of the user's folder (for Windows)... and many other things - all of this can give many interesting informations to any scammer (or worse) who wants to do something bad. Especially when you can link all of this with the "obligatory" full name for our profil on this forum.

I personally don't really care to report bugs or problems anymore.

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I'm pretty sure there is a middle ground for this type of things. They want people to be registered on the forum to share bug reports? Why not adding something to share these logs (and other informations), but not visible to the public. Someone writes a post, upload the zip files, with a checkbox to choose to make any files (and url in the post) only visible to the mods/devs

When I think of the prevalence of reported bugs that turn out to be operator issues, I imagine BMD being flooded with reports by inexperienced users who make a mistake or misunderstand how something works.

This is a valid point, however BMD does offer a support for the Studio version users, so it is already possible to do so via the web form. It is very likely that the web form limits the amount of the intake, but currently it is as if you were to say "yes, you can have the support, but we'll make it hard for you to use", which kinda gives a wrong impression

Reporting bugs in the forums works, believe me, and the forum allows for embedding images and links to videos to help show the cause. If it cannot be recreated because people reporting them do not include enough info, it isn't likely to be fixed. When bugs are reported on the forums, if there isn't enough info, other users can point this out. They can also highlight possible user error. None of this would happen with a 'report a bug' feature. It would instead be a great way to ensure that bugs are less likely to be fixed.

I've encountered mentions of some bugs here in the forums that they were not fixed for a long time, despite being reported multiple times. I've also started a few topics that were left without a reply. I may give it another try.

I've encountered mentions of some bugs here in the forums that they were not fixed for a long time, despite being reported multiple times.

Unfortunately you can't conflate reporting a bug with getting the bug fixed. The devs move in mysterious ways / dance to the beat of their own drum etc. ;)

That's true. It's certainly frustrating from a user's point of view but it's quite accurate.


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Unfortunately you can't conflate reporting a bug with getting the bug fixed. The devs move in mysterious ways / dance to the beat of their own drum etc.

Of course, in fact I know it very well, I've been working as a software developer myself But it's not disconnected from the user input either, if a product manager sees something that bothers users a lot, they would try and allocate developers time to fix it, after fixing critical bugs like crashes, etc.

Also, I think it wouldn't be too far from the truth to assume that bugs reported on the forums are only added to a bug tracker or backlog if somebody from the BMD decides it's important enough. If not, then the reports are as good as forgotten, I doubt anybody is going to browse topics more than a couple of weeks older to see if there's anything of interest there.

If it landed in the tracker directly, as it is the case with the web form, the support staff would have to deal with it one way or another, e.g. either sending it to the developers to fix, telling the user that they cannot fix it right now and suggest a viable workaround or telling the user what is it they're doing wrong.

I find the forums sufficient. I would prefer no development time be spent on this.