I still use 7.0d, even though I have 8. Just too many problems reported, although it is tough to tell whether this is representative of version 8, or whether the few who have problems are just more apparent. One thing I DO know and that is that if you read back through all the posts on this board going back to version 4 (which is when I started using the product), the word "crash" was seldom mentioned.

I just did a quick review of posts where the subject had any variation of the word crash. There are 2,631 such posts since the beginning of this forum. Approximately 430 of these are since August 30, 2007, when Vegas 8 was released. Most of the crash reports since then seem to be related just to Vegas 8. In the nine months prior to that, many were related to 7.0e, but of those reported with early variations of version 7, almost all of them mention Cineform. For those that don't, HDV is almost always involved. Very few crashes reported with DV.

I looked at a few of the posts from even earlier, going back to Vegas 6, and the still photo problem I mentioned above, was definitely involved in many of those.

Thus, my summary is that if you get Cineform and Vegas installed in the correct order, and if you turn off all your other stuff (anti-virus, etc.), and only use plugins that you purchase (rather than the freebies), and if you stay with 7.0d, I'd be surprised if you have any stability problems.