Arrange it so that, presuming this apparent “need” to continue to frequently reauthorize continues, we can do it knowing when it will be due and so as to avoid having it happen at an inopportune time (you know, like in the middle of a performance or something?)
Make it so that it happens with the need to step through closing the plugin, firing up the licenser, and hitting the “ok” to reauthorize, etc.
This would achieve the closest to what we used to have with this product.
Agreed. I can’t be subject to the whims of the LM to decide that it’s had enough of me, and to block my use of the product that I paid for, and was completely authorized on just the previous day.
No other software that I’ve seen has such an amateurish scheme, and leaves the user with so few resources to correct inevitable problems. I’m not sure I’d be interested in a BFD4 if this isn’t corrected in BFD3.
The thing is, the only way to bug test the LM’s 30 day check is by having it fuck up and lock us out. And then if no internet, no BFD. Any further bugging out with the LM and if its still be broken with regard to the 30 day check, and the only way to know is by having it cause yet more lock outs. What happens if the way it connects over the net bugs out? At that point it doesnt matter if you have the internet or not.
Deal with it at the root cause, and remove the 30 day check. Its over the top and draconian. Its the only way to be sure.
News to me that it’s a 30 day thing. I’m pretty sure it’s happening more than that.
Trouble is when a move like this is made in an attempt to stave off piracy, the fact that it’s so poorly implemented is more likely to have the opposite effect or if not piracy then another drum VST.
Either way BFD will be shooting themselves in the foot.
The current issue is 100% a bug and not how it’s supposed to work though
Steve
It’s happening more than that if your products weren’t authorized all at the same time. So, if BFD 3 is authorized on July 1, and London Sessions on July 5, then on the 31st of July, your BFD 3 will complain, but London Sessions will not. After you authorize BFD 3 on July 31, both will work until London Sessions stops working on the 4th of August, because its OWN timer of 30 days has expired.
So, instead of authorizing once a month, you authorize as many times as the number of products you own in a month.
Well, yes. I’m mostly online these days, so re-authorization itself does not take long.
The problem in my case is that if a product has gone MIA without me knowing it, and I open a project that uses the kit, the kit is trashed. That’s what pisses me off, because it had NEVER happened before.
I just believe that all the other people that want to use BFD offline are the ones hit the hardest, because when a product “expires”, they have to first find a way to go online, and then authorize. Add the above behaviour of authorizing in installments, forcing them to go online regularly, as the products dates dictate and I’m sure it’s a pretty explosive mix.
The kit isn’t permanently trashed though is it?
I mean it will be just as it was once everything is reauthorised which takes a couple of minutes at most.
Steve
I cannot be 100% sure, but the one time it happened it went like this.
Ah, yes I think that might be a Cubase thing.
I’ve always used Cakewalk Sonar and now bandlab and it’s always recalled any changes in BFD2 & 3
Steve
I haven’t missed a kit before in Cubase using BFD, but then again I didn’t have to go through reauthorization so often. I know what caused it now, so I’ll watch out for it, but it’s a very demoralizing thing when it happens. And, you can lose your kit if you haven’t saved it manually, which is a pretty big deal.
Most of my projects have to be completed under time pressure. I can’t afford unreliable, self-deauthorizing software - even if the license refresh only takes a few minutes.
Suggestion: Refresh only after installing an update / bug fix. Then InMusic has to do at least something in return for a refresh.
No BFD4 for me if this problem is not solved in Version 3.
And for live work, its a non starter. For hiring a drummer with a MIDI kit for a few hours, as I’ve done in the past, and then having to go thru all this, is also a non starter.
There are so many usage scenarios where this is a non starter, the LM simply cannot be a liability, or BFD gains no traction in the market place for VSTi’s and then we’ll all lose out.
Another thought that just struck me regarding ownership.
If they are determined to go down this road they will inevitably get a lot of bad press which will probably make potential new users look elsewhere, people who have spent a lot of money on BFD3 and all the other kits will have a hard time trying to sell it on so they’ll be stuck with it.
As I said, I’m quite sure the current behaviour is a bug but I hope people at BFD (and not just @exBFD_Drew ) are reading and taking note.
It’s becoming a concern that no one has responded to the many threads to address peoples worries around these issues.
I’m trying to remain optimistic and I’m still looking forward to beta testing BFD4 but my optimism is starting to wane.
Steve
P.S @Murt I use the Pod X3 Live too and agree, it’s a pain having to turn it on every time.
I use the pod farm vst just for the bass and I have to admit, I ended up using a cracked version so I don’t have to have the X3 turned on if all I’m wanting to do is mixing.
I did pay for it, and the bass expansion pack so I feel no shame and if the future of BFD3/4 is to require me to be on line at it’s whim then I certainly wouldn’t blame BFD3/4 users for using a pirated version rather than having to be on line.
I’m sure it’ll be fine, but these things just happen unless its just given a bit of a push to say oi, this aint working for standard usage atm. Its a fairly hefty bug, and its been months that its been going on now, and while the wackamole is working and getting round bugs with every release, its nearly always this recurring thing thats causing it. And I dont understand the net benefit of having such a system.
You know, with a lot of the mini pc’s that are coming out now, and a small portable monitor, its a full fledged BFD machine smaller than a laptop, that can be using on the move or stationary just slotting into every thing else in the studio. And having that running inside your favourite DAW with a bunch of presets/DAW settings loading on boot ready to play or record instantly BFD instantly. Its really where I’m aiming at the moment with BFD. A standalone DAW enabled BFD machine, with full ‘module’ like output… audio/midi/usb/wireless. Solar/battery powered 
Makes it a bit less mobile if one goes off grid 
So, I was able to observe the reauth cycle as BFD intended. Here’s what I saw on Mac:
At exactly 30 days, three of my kits were due to be re-authed. I launched BFD3, and I got no message indicating this, probably because BFD3 itself was still authorized. The content in question all appeared in the browsers, and I got no error message, or anything in the Content Locations indicating that licensing was an issue. The content itself, though, wouldn’t load. No errors or messages. Just wouldn’t load.
I then launched the LM. The LM said the three broken kits were unauthorized. It contacted inMusic, reauthorized them, and everything was hunky dory. I saw the temp auth keys in com.inmusicbrands.softwareunlock corresponding to those products were updated.
*********************Now the interesting part *********************
I wanted to test whether I could pre-emptively deauth and reauth a kit, so that I could force reactivation. I took my least used kit, and dauthed and reauthed it. Seemed OK. Did that two more times - and got the message that I had reached my maximum number of authorizations, and couldn’t do it again.
So, it seems that BFD has left us no mechanism to force reauthorization, and that we’re left at the whims of the LM to determine when we can do that. THIS is the unacceptable part. I could probably live with 30 days (although, to be honest, it’s really, really short, given that own these products permanantly), IF I could force the reauthorization to occur on my schedule, without burning through some opaque, indeterminite, hidden limit.
So, if inMusic is going to force this scheme on us, we need:
1.) countdown timer, displayed in the LM, to know when the current temp authorization runs out
2.) license authorization refresh button
3.) unlimited reauthorization on a single machine when refreshing using this system. i.e. if I gig with BFD every Friday night, I need to refresh every Friday night. Not two or three times with an email to support, and not two or three times in a month. It has to work every time.
@exBFD_Drew
My being’s wilted. 
I know it’s a crappy thing to say, but I’m glad you went first and discovered how things work. (and took the bullet so that rest of us wouldn’t have to. Personally, I was just about to do the exact same thing.)
Edit: A big THANK YOU, since Discourse only allows likes.
Honestly, I suspect the ship has sailed on the inMusic scheme. I think that’s an inMusic plan that extends across multiple product lines. There’s at least one license in the temp key directory which doesn’t seem related to BFD. I don’t recognize the product at all (SAS6). It’s a little strange, though, because I thought my other inMusic (AIR Instruments) products were all iLok based. So maybe there’s hope that there’s flexibility on the subject.
Now, the good news is that it didn’t prevent me from reauthing the product. It prevented me from deauthorizing it. So, I have a working kit. I just don’t know how long that will last, whether it will survive the next reauth cycle, or (and I hope this is the case) the number of deauth’s/reauth’s will be reset when the next natural cycle comes up. It would be great if BFD just spelled this stuff out for us in a user manual or something.
Short of replacing it altogether with some proven auth scheme, I just want it to be workable, one way or another.
it was a mere couple of days since the last intrusion of the authorization scheme here.
this is intolerable, unacceptable
Definitely unacceptable to me, I made the mistake of not noticing that BFD was not activated pending an activation check, saved my session and closed Cubase. Opened it next time (after reactivating BFD) and noticed the entire BFD session was cleared to default. If I hadn’t saved that preset previously I’d have been out all my work.
I have no idea why this type of behavior seems like a good idea to any developer, this is how you give your users away to the competition. Or it this another step towards realism in having BFD act like a pissy drummer who walks out of a session and you’re out an entire day’s work?