I recently upgraded to Vegas Pro 8, and subsequently the 8A update.

I have noticed a few things that are actually inferior to Vegas 7e that I was using. I mainly shoot and edit HDV.

I had no problems with 7 through 7E.

Vegas Pro 8 takes a LOT LONGER to render. For example, with an HDV edit, I could render to MPEG2 for SD DVDs at a rate of about .7x timeline length. For example a 100-minute show would render in 70 minutes. I also render to WMV-HD, so it would take about 8x timeline length for 720p and 13x timeline length for 1080p.

On my last job, a 90-minute wedding, it took about 4.5 hours to render mpeg2 files for SD dvd. The program crashed trying to render to WMVHD, so I had to render to m2t first, then bring that into Vegas 7 to render to WMVHD.

It always crashes when trying to render to an AVI intermediate.

I have been able to render WMVHD in Vegas Pro 8 with short shows, like 3-7 minutes.

Is your project set to 32 bit ? I know it takes A LOT longer to render 32 bit than it does 8.

FYI - I agree on the "slowness" comment.

I ran a render of 1 video/1 stills/2 audio tracks with 2 video filters and 2 audio filters per track. Clips originally captured using Cineform HD at 1920 x 1080. Total clip time = 40 seconds. Vegas 32 bit processing on.

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RESULT 1.
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Rendered the clips using cineform HD codec to 1920x1080 (ie near lossless)

Result = CPU usage around 30% peaking occassionaly at 50%, and once going up to 60%. Never any higher.

TOTAL RENDER TIME = 20 minutes
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RENDER RESULT 2.
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Rendered same 40 sec clips using Mainconcept MPEG2 codec to DVD PAL 720 x 576
Result = CPU usage around 65% peaking at 75%.
Total render time = 3 minutes

RENDER RESULT 3.
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Rendered a longer 2m10sec clip in 5 min 40 sec


I'll now run these with Vegas 32bit turned off.

Sherif