Some of you have wondered why we didn’t catch this bug sooner after it was introduced. I can see how that might seem inconceivable from the outside, to the point of making me and my colleagues look like incompetent slackers. Let me offer a little perspective from the inside that I hope will cast us in a somewhat better light.
When this bug was introduced, we were basically in the home stretch. The QA team was in the midst of sweeping the program one last time (while also testing bug fixes, investigating bugs reported by our pre-release testers, reviewing documentation for accuracy, etc.). Given the scale and scope of Premiere Pro’s functional and the size of our QA team, during the final sweep we don’t have the luxury of going very deep. [Features are tested deeply earlier in the cycle while features are under active development.] Considering that this particular bug does not manifest itself until the third launch, it does not surprise or alarm me that it was not caught during our final sweep. Besides, it’s possible that the multicam feature was actually tested thoroughly enough during the sweep to hit this bug, but before the bug was introduced.
Regarding criticism of how this bug was handled once it was identified and, especially, after it was deferred, I don’t have much insight to share. One point I should clarify: When I say it was a “known issue,” that does not mean that everybody on the team knew about it, or that its severity was apparent to those who were aware of it. At a minimum, it means that a bug report was on the books and that a small group known as the “bug review committee” [BRC] had reviewed it. As noted in my prior post, those on the BRC were aware enough of the severity to make it a priority for the patch, but they might not have anticipated that it would be bad enough to warrant a special critical patch. To keep the decisions regarding this bug in perspective, keep in mind that the BRC not only had a fairly high volume of bugs to process but the members of that committee each had lots of pressing responsibilities other than reviewing bugs.
That brings me to the third phase, which started on June 19 with this thread. Since then, our handling of the matter has been nothing short of poor, and for that I take personal responsibility. Though I was not even aware of this bug prior to this thread, I’ve been the main staff member on the scene, and I recognized by the 20th that it was a bad scene. I should have arranged for a banner sticky post warning of the bug, and I apologize to all who would have been spared inconvenience, frustration, and lost time had I done so. Alas, I don't have the admin chops to create such a sticky post.