Here's an update. I shot a church service last Sunday on the HV40 at 24F setting. I upgraded to Vegas 8c and captured with it. No dropped frames and 1 file but a long segment of audio was blank on the timeline. So I recaptured and it was fine. I tested rendering a short segment in a couple formats and no issues. I brought in a separate audio source recorded off the mixing board and synced it up. Then I did some test renders again with both audio sources combined. It worked fine. Now I am further into the project having added volume envelopes to each track to fade back and forth in specific spots and put a few images in also. I decided to test rendering a small segment again. Now the audio is screwed up again. If I use network rendering the same thing happens. I also tried taking the volume envelopes out to test and got the same results.

However, if I render audio and video separately into intermediate codecs, AVI and WAV, and combine them in a new project and render it works. So there is a work around but it wastes an amazing amount of time. I just don't get why the audio is not screwed up on the timeline and rendered fine at the beginning and now it's all jacked up when I try to render. Do I need to change the project settings or some Vegas settings? HDV audio is 384kbps MP2 right? I've got the project settings set for 16/44 audio which is the standard setting for 24p HDV 1440X1080.

For one thing, ALWAYS render audio and video separately...not sure why you would render into avi then reinsert to a new project, unless I'm missing something.

Normally for DVD I render separately. This particular project is for web delivery so I want to render straight to WMV but when trying to render to any format the audio is all messed up. A couple posts up Larry suggested trying to render audio and video separately into intermediate formats and combining them in a new project then rendering the final file from there. That seems to work but it's a lengthy workaround. There is no legitimate reason why I shouldn't be able to render directly from the original project but it is screwing up for some unknown reason. It has to be the HDV format that is causing trouble for some reason because I've done tons of projects in SD on this same machine with Vegas with audio and video separate and combined in numerous formats and never had audio issues.

I understand now. BTW, since your shooting for the web, wouldn't 30p be better?

I just wanted wanted to shoot 24p for the simple fact that I could. No other reason really. I have the HV40 to play with for the summer and am trying to take advantage of it.

I suppose 30p would be less problematic to deal with.

I thought maybe I had it figured out and changed the audio ruler setting to match the video setting. That did no good.

What project settings should I be using with the HV40 24p footage? It is wrapped in a 60i container right? So should I set the project to 60i HDV? If so can I then render at 24p? Will that even work?

I think I truly have the problem solved and you're going to laugh at what it was. I had a VST limiter plug in on the master audio output and that seems to be screwing with the audio. It had absolutely nothing to do with my workflow or project settings. Now I just need to see if I can find another limiter plugin that might work since that allows me to mix two sources to taste and not have to worry about peaking by a couple dB here and there. So any recommendations in that area? I am using the Antress Modern Limiter now.

Glad you found your problem. 24p is what you want not because it is less problematic, but because your medium is the web and it would look optimal.

I quite like the Volume Maximizer in Izotope Ozone. Ozone is a very nice mastering suite for not much money, and I use all the tools on music projects, but the volume max is used on almost every video project I do.