Just to add a data point, I too am reverting back to 8.23 (which for me is still a significant upgrade, since the version I used to work with up until this week was 3.85, several years old!)
Although Borate did his best to help me with one of my problems (which we solved basically by not using that particular feature), the number of issues I am having with 8.45 is just too much. The worst of these are:
1) a simple track split causes the program to hang for about 3 or 4 seconds before you can play the sequence again. Not task breaking, but very annoying.
2) Transitions of any sort more complicated that a simple split (fade to black, cross fade, etc) take forever before you can play across them. I mean like 10 or 20 seconds!
3) The one I found just this morning, which is the real deal-breaker for me. Loading a track of about 80 minutes. It plays fine, then I try and zoom in on the track (with the mouse wheel), and it will no longer play. I get sound, but the preview picture is frozen. This may only occur for longer videos (this is the longest one I've loaded since I upgraded). Zoom back out, and it plays fine. And I left this track overnight to load, so it couldn't be a buffering thing.
So yeah, those first two, while irritating, I could live with. The last one, not so much. I've reverted to 8.23 just now, and so far, NONE of those problems occur. 80 minute track plays fine zoomed in, transitions are seamless (even complex ones), and you can play across them almost immediately (even faster than you could with 3.85). So far anyway, I haven't found any bugs (course, I've only spent about an hour or two with it so far, maybe some will appear). I'm going to try and use the AVI export again and see if it is better than what I got with 8.45.
Not trying to harp on the program, just passing on some data. And I greatly appreciate Borate's attempts to help me out with the AVI export. I absolutely loved 3.85, and I see lots of improvements with 8.23. But it seems like something is up with 8.45, maybe it's because I'm on an AMD chip rather than Intel? I dunno. Perhaps it's just a few of us (or just me). But I have work to get done, and I need a functional program, so I had to revert, I can't mess around with bugs, heh.
I hope that helps.
Ron