Bad news. Thanks, Edward. Maybe in Vegas 7. :-(

I'm trying to just get a good render right now - since the .AVI wouldn't play without the images jumpy (on another PC).

So I rendered to MPEG2 (which I think is required for DVD creation anyway??) - and it played without jumping on the other PC. But it did crash windows media player with a memory error (on the other PC!). So I think that the virus software and other suggestions you have made might help that.

What is the best format to render to (.AVI vs MPEG2)?

It depends on what you are doing. If you're going to DVD, rendering to MPEG2 is fine. If you want to keep a higher quality file, render to AVI. Now, you didn't specify what format of AVI you were using. Common is DV-AVI which should play quite well. However, if you go to "Uncompressed" AVI, it could certainly stutter and takes a LOT more disk space.

I could not find DV-AVI as an option when I render.

Is that just using NTSC DV as the template?

Why would using MPEG-2, which goes on a DVD, be lesser quality? I'm confused - wouldn't DVD want a better quality?

Yes, pick "AVI" as the file type and then NTSC DV as the preset. That is DV-AVI.

MPEG2 is much more highly compressed than DV. For example, if you put 2 hours on a DVD, you're taking 26Gig of source and compressing that to just over 4 Gig. And, yes, that will reduce the quality - especially if you're wanting to do future editing.

Ok - I'm starting to understand - I think.

So, I created each "chapter" as a different Vegas project. I thought I would render each of these to .AVI (since they are made up of .AVI and JPG anyway). I didn't think I would be losing any quality with this.

Each of these .AVI segments would then be put into a new project that put the whole thing together.

That's when I realized that the .AVI wasn't working well. Should a NTSC DV .AVI play on another PC with WINDOWS MEDIA player? Or is that NTSC DV only going to play in Vegas?

How can I make sure that a file I render is good quality? Will rendering be affected by virus software, or will it simply slow down while something like that runs?

Yes, a DV-AVI file should play fine on another PC with WMP. Virus software would simply slow things down.

Are you using Vegas 6b by chance. 6c clears up a bug that crashes Vegas during memory intensive renders.

Frame Accuracy???
 

Occasionally when I render a timeline in Vegas (24p), I find that it is inserting a duplicate frame at some point in the timeline. When I then overlay the new rendered footage over the old region, it is not frame accurate! It is off by one frame! It only seems to happen with codecs other than DV.

And the duplicate frame happens in exactly the same spot each time!

Any ideas??

Thanks Edward --

Will do. Wasn't sure where to find you as I've only known you from these boards.

Will redirect all matters excalibur to there in the future!

Thanks Laurence, I am using B, I hadn't checked for an update in a while. I did get it to finally render though. I have an ASUS motherboard that has automatic overclocking and I didn't notice that because I haven't had this many crashes before, but I set it to STANDARD and it rendered fine. It must have been overheating. But I will definately check out 6c. Thanks again.

As an aside I'd like to mention that the Gearshift plugin rocks on multiple levels. It made editing all that HDV footage a breeze. Those VASST fellas make some nice stuff.

If you downloaded yesterday, you may want to check back today and get the new 4.6 version. Click on the What's new in version 4.6? button for details on some of the changes in this version.

Gearshift is really cool, but IMO Cineform's ConnectHD is the way to go for HD.

I can get in today. And Excalibur 4.6 is out? Thanks Edward!

Yep. Just made it visible this morning. Click on the "What's New" link to see the major changes. Pay particular attention to the new Quick Label tool!