At the risk of being extremely politically incorrect:
The wrong person or people are in charge of N7 VCA development, in my opinion. I first said this about 1 year ago. I’ve been mixing hit records using VCA style automation on Neve, SSL, Euphonix, etc, etc for over 30 years now. Even worked with Euphonix and a now-former (and fabulous) Steinberg employee on some of the initial Euphonix style automation features integrated into Nuendo. The current implementation is not how VCA Automation would be “intended” to work by any of the dozens of successful mixers I know and work/compete with.
Steinberg is going to have to relent on this sooner or later. This is just not working out. Some pain now or more pain later. A tough choice, and you have my empathy, but I think it’s going to become inevitable. But how can SB look at the posted videos and say “Yeah, we NAILED it guys…HI FIVE!” ?
I have no personal ill will against anyone at SB and believe best efforts are being made. I really do. But somewhere I think there is a bad match in work assignments. I will take no offense if this post is deleted, because I realize this situation is a tough pill to swallow. But to my point, making difficult (I would imagine) changes in this regard some time ago would have prevented this current scenario.