NCH Software is Terrible

NCH SoftwareHere’s my review about why I feel NCH Software is terrible.

So NCH is a software development company out of Australia.

Their site is http://www.nchsoftware.com/ and another one https://www.nch.com.au/index.html

I remember them from years ago, but I remember them not being user friendly even back then and I’m talking in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

Anyway, I don’t remember how I came across them again since I never see them advertise anywhere, but I was looking for something that would record me talking and no one else seemed to have anything easy to use, but they did.

Then I was looking for something easy to edit videos and my website coder started using them so he started training me on their videopad, and it was fairly easy to use once I was trained, so I kept at it.

Then I even started paying them for that software and the recordpad software.

While their software does have a lot of features, it’s not always user friendly and it hasn’t been updated in what, at least 10-20 years. I don’t really care what it looks like, I only care if it works, and is easy to use.

In the very beginning around March/April 2020, there were already issues with their site, and when my website coder figured out the reason, he laughed because one of the issues showed how outdated their coding is.

My website coder also complained about how they were always trying to upsell at every turn.

Since their software is free for personal use I didn’t care that much, but he did, and since then, another one of their former customers also complained about that.

I had no real issues with the video editing software, but I was starting to have issues with NCH’s tech support.

I would write them asking them how to do something and they wouldn’t tell me. They said they don’t help you with that, you have to look in their knowledge base and INSTEAD of giving me a link to the article to find the answer, they would just make me do all the searching.

I had NO IDEA what I was paying for if NOT support.

Since my website coder was training me, I didn’t mind much, but most every OTHER company will give you the link to the article in question.

Then late November 2020 I started to have issues with their transition affect where you do a blur for X seconds in between an image and the start of a video. Normally there’s a popup that shows up asking you if you want to move the video forward (how ever many seconds the transition was for) and you just clicked a button and bamn, everything lined up perfectly.

Well the popup stopped appearing, so I couldn’t do my work.

I wrote to them and they again refused to help me, so I had to start screaming at them that I am paying for their service and they need to FIX their software!

Then they wanted me to send them the project file which I did.

No, that wasn’t the right file and they are too stupid to tell me the right file in the first place. My website coder had to show me how to find it and send it to them.

Then they sent me this site where you can send large files to someone and when I responded back to them my e-mail came back undeliverable saying something was on the spam list.

I had no idea what it was talking about.

After trying to e-mail them several times and them all coming back undeliverable, I finally figured out it was that LINK they gave me, so I removed it and the e-mail finally went through.

I told them about it and what did they do??? THEY INCLUDED THE LINK IN EVERY E-MAIL THEY SENT BACK TO ME.

This BS went on and on and on and on for days. I would remove the link, and when they responded, they would put it back in where it was further down in the e-mail thread.

I even tried to start a new e-mail telling them WHY I was starting a new e-mail, but they responded back to the old one.

I screamed at them to STOP including the link in the e-mail… they would include it again.

If I didn’t think they were morons before, this sealed the deal.

Even after sending NCH the files they STILL couldn’t figure out what the transition issue was, although one of the smarter ones sent me an image of the popup and I said YES, that’s it.

They had already told me to change my settings, but the “Ask Me” was ALREADY checked off. They just assumed it wasn’t. Nothing had changed. I never touched a thing, the software just one day stopped working.

I then started posting on the community forum and they seemed to be morons too, but one did ask me what version of NCH videopad I was using which is WHEN I realized I wasn’t getting notices that there were updates.

The community member said there are never updates for people who pay by the month which is ridiculous. Of course NCH’s tech support said there are updates, but I don’t trust ANYTHING their tech support says. They are very low IQ and they don’t read what I write or read what their OTHER co-workers in their office writes in the ticket.

Anyway, the NCH tech support ignored me for a few days so I had to start screaming again.

Then they sent me a link to download some testing software of theirs which I did. Only after using the software for 2 minutes, there were TONS of errors videopad was throwing out.

I sent them the log file, they acknowledged there were issues with their videopad, and they sent it to the development team to fix it.

I waited, and waited, and waited.

After a week I asked what’s gong on.

They ignored me.

I wrote them again.

They ignored me again.

I started a NEW ticket and DEMANDED A MANAGER.

They asked me what the issue was – OH MY GAWD, IT’S LIKE TALKING TO A 5 YEAR OLD!

I explained the issue AGAIN (On top of me detailing the issue several times, I had alsoi sent them a video of the issue at least twice before.)

That’s when someone FINALLY told me that NCH removed that feature. WTH???????????????????

He did tell me to just move the video over to where I want it. I said I can’t, and I went to try doing that again and sure enough I couldn’t.

He then told me I had to unlock the video and that worked.

OMG, 3 fucking WEEKS have gone by and all it took was 2 sentences telling me what to do which solved the problem of the popup not showing up.

I couldn’t do my work all because NCH’s tech support is so stupid, doesn’t read the tickets, doesn’t read what the other tech support person says, and they ask me to repeat things over and over and over again. Plus they clearly don’t know what’s going on within the company.

When I wrote back almost right away to the guy with a brain asking WHY they removed the feature that is clearly needed, some other tech support guy Fredrico (I’ve had this moron before) wrote back that I have to go turn it on in the settings.

I blew a gasket.

I SCREAMED for a manager and I was ignored again.

And trust me, while I was waiting for them to fix it (they never were), I have looked around for other video editing software that will be as user friendly as NCH’s videopad is. Especially with this transition feature and also being able to paste in the exact time stamp (from YouTube videos) in a counter where I can then split the video.

Amazingly so far I haven’t been able to find ANY video editing software that has that counter where I can do that. They expect you ALL to use the tedious difficult red cursor line (I don’t know what it’s technically called.)

I spent 1 1/2 weeks asking around, trying to learn various different video editing softwares, and NOTHING.

I also came across a guy who also mentioned the terrible NCH tech support, and in his case their export feature wasn’t working properly, so he left them for DaVinci Resolve.

And some other guy in a video editing forum said that NCH is notorious for having terrible software.

So that’s my story for you.

Hmm, looks like they have phone support, but I didn’t know that and I don’t think I ever got a code even though I paid.

  • USA, Canada and rest of Americas: 720-627-7145
  • UK, Ireland, Europe and Africa: 44 203 318 4828
  • Australia/New Zealand: 61 3 8518 4096

Not sure why they have a US mailing address:

NCH Software, Inc.
6120 Greenwood Plaza Blvd
Greenwood Village CO, 80111
USA

If they are American, they have horrific customer service for an American company.


5 thoughts on “NCH Software is Terrible”

  1. So I attempted to reach out to the accounting department today hoping my complaints would get to a manager and I asked for 1-2 months for free considering all the time I’ve wasted plus all the stress and OF COURSE, I got the same fucking morons from tech support even THOUGH on the site it said it must be an accounting issue and not a tech support issue.

    I got two different tech support people I’ve had before and both were once again totally disgusting.

    Either the ignored most of my comments or questions, OR they asked me what the problem was even though I already told accounting and told them to check the other tickets.

    They finally just stopped responding.

  2. So I finally got someone from accounting to talk to address me asking for a refund and instead of giving me just the refund and keeping my account open, they CLOSED my account.

    This was AFTER I asked tech support when I would be billed again and he told me.

    They are THE most incompetent brainless tech and customer support I’ve EVER COME ACROSS.

  3. So more drama with NCH and their terrible tech support.

    I got a guy called Federico who’s English and politeness seems okay, but that doesn’t mean he was.

    He ignored my 2 comments about issues with their videopad…. (I had to ask 2-3 times before I got a response. sigh)

    1. The software doesn’t tell me when there’s an update. And not only that, guess what, they didn’t even code it so it updates on its own, you literally have to go to their site to download it each time there’s an update.

    That’s very very POOR programming.

    2. When they came out with the update a month or so ago, every time you pull down an image or video to the timeline, it inserts itself in a track 2, NOT track 1, and then I have to waste time pulling it down.

    If it’s an image I’m adding to the front of a video (or audio) this is a huge issue and it wastes my time because it’s very tedious to pull it down.

    I also asked the community about it and they reported it to NCH at least a month or longer ago and NCH still hasn’t fixed it.

    Then he tells me they don’t give out free months as IF I was just randomly asking for free months out of the blue.

    And by the way, they did refund me a free month. This is what I mean, they don’t know what is going on in their own company.

    THEN the issue I’ve been having this entire TIME that caused me to lose countless hours of my life came up.

    He asked me for another portable project to show him how it’s not working even THOUGH I sent that to them months ago.

    Then (get this) he tells me, “I checked the last video project you sent and I can tell you there is nothing wrong with the program when appliying the transition. If you are adding a transition between an image file and a video file you will never see the message pop-up as this dialog is for video clips only.”

    NOT TRUE.

    He had me thinking I was INSANE.

    Sure enough, I provided PROOF that the transition DOES popup when I put an image (I call it a slide) in front of a video.

    Twice I was able to get the transition to pop up on two different videos.

    So here I am wasting my time AGAIN, working to improve NCH and their stupid software and do I get paid for that????

    NO!

    Do they even acknowledge that I’m doing all this work for them???

    NO!

  4. Update:

    Well, the software is now working again, & the last idiot I got told me it’s not supposed to have the transition popup when there’s an image attached to a video. Of course he is wrong & they must have fixed it.

    But this other bug I told them about a couple of months ago & I got a stupid response keeps happening.

    The location where the vpj files are saved and/or the location where the exported files go keeps getting removed & I have to reset it in options.

    It’s happened around 3-4 times so far.

  5. I’d been working on videos for hours and saved at least 2 others with no issues when I went to save another project which automatically SHOULD go into the same folder all my other NCH projects go into, but it didn’t.

    Once again NCH took me to a folder where it said I couldn’t save there. (what???) and to choose another folder.

    I had to browse to the correct folder. I don’t even know where I was. It looked like an explorer window where I had done a search on my computer.

    This isn’t the first time that NCH has done this and I complained to them about it before and of course their brain dead tech support just told me I made the mistake.

    I’ll see if it happens with the next NCH project.

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