Hi,
this is a known problem in Vegas Pro 9. I'm waiting for a fix too.

At this link you can find a workaround using tsmuxer http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/896708 .
This is only a workaround but you can play the AVCHD files. When I want to make a AVCHD-disc using Nero - then Nero hangs.

There are other bugs too. There is also a immediately crash of Vegas if I want to render to mp4 using Sony AVC template.

I hope Sony Creative Software will fix these problems soon. The only way I found to make AVCHD-discs for me is to render to MPEG2 then convert with another tool (Nero, and so on) to AVCHD.

I hope this helps.

There is also a immediately crash of Vegas if I want to render to mp4 using Sony AVC template.

I'm not seeing this at all. I"m using AVCHD from my Sony XR500V camera which is 1080/60i AVCHD and rendering to the standard Sony AVC mp4 template without every having a crash. Can you be more specific? Post screen shot of render template you are using? In fact, I have not had a render crash on any template with AVCHD or SD --- using 9.0d Win7 64 bit. In the past all my render crashes had to do with bad media on the timeline. Every one. Sometimes it was audio too. In fact, most of the time. Just my experience. Your mileage may vary.

I'm using a Canon HF100 1080/50i (PAL) with 16 Mbit and audio is DD2.0 AC3. Vegas 64bit-version is installed under Win7 64bit.

Normally I want render as AVCHD. Because of the corrupt output of AVCHD I'm looking for a solution to keep the file size small. So I tried to render as mp4 and vegas crashes immediately at start. I tried this on a fresh installed computer (other hardware and Win7 64bit) too with the same effect.

I don't know how to post a screenshot in the forum.
I'm using the standard Sony AVC template, at the system tab I changed to mp4, the audio was automatically changed to AAC stereo, at video-tab the format: avc, frame 1920x1080, profile high, entropy CABAC, first field, bitrate 20.000.000 (also 15.000.000 tried).
The media files are ok, I tried several.

Maybe the canon files are the problem ? Rendering to MPEG2 or XDCAM EX MP4 is no problem.

MichiA -- If you place just a 5 second event on the timeline (with nothing else) from your Canon HF100 does that crash on render to Sony AVC mp4 .. Can you e-mail me the 5 seconds -- or post it for download somewhere on the Internet? You can e-mail me by clicking on XBERK next to the Posted by above.

BTW, the way to post an image to the forum is to post it somewhere on the Internet and then post the link (the web address) to that image on the forum.

"I'm shooting with sony HDR-SR12E in 1080i. I'm using Vegas Pro 9.0d for editing. I can play very well the source file (mts), then I go to edit and finally convert to AVCHD"

I'm not sure what you mean by "convert to avchd"??

Do you mean create a avchd disk?

FWIW... I have no issues at all creating Blu Ray disks (I have a SR12 as well) but I do not use the avchd template. The avchd (m2ts) template uses the STUDIO 5.1 encoder which is nothing but trouble. The few times I did use it I had problems with the disk.

Instead I create a M2TS file with no audio and then I create a separate AC3 file with the PRO encoder and I combine these with DVDa. Perfect Blu Ray disks every time. (Granted I do not do avchd disks).

Update:
Now I found a solution for the mp4 crash.
Changing the audio bitrate from 48000 (=default setting) to 44100 helps, now Vegas renders the video with no problems.

I took an m2ts clip about 30 sec long from my Sony HDR-XR520VE camera and brought it into Vegas 9.0c 64 bit, after setting the project template to match the clip (1920x1080x50i, AC3 5.1).

I rendered to another m2ts file using "Sony AVC" type and the "AVCHD 1920x1080-50i 5.1 surround" template. It took about 5 secs or 1/6 real time to process, so I suppose it was "smart" rendering.

The original clip played OK using VLC Media Player, but the new clip video froze after about 12 secs, while the sound kept on going.

I passed this clip through tsRemuxer (less than a second to process!) and the latest clip played without fault, the same as the original.

QED (Vegas 9c can't render to AVCHD properly, but tsRemuxer fixed it)

For me this a similar solution (I need tsmuxer with the gui).

But !!! If I want to create an AVCHD disc with the remuxed file with Nero 9 then NeroVision hangs. For me this is a definitive bug from Sony AVC encoder and it seems that this is a corrupt video output. If I render the m2ts - file without audio the same problem occurs.

"QED (Vegas 9c can't render to AVCHD properly, but tsRemuxer fixed it) "

TSmuxeR (and TSreMUXer) don't "render" at all. They change or alter the containers the raw files are in. If Vegas wasn't "rendering" properly then TSmuxer wouldn't work either. There is something amiss with the container that Vegas is spitting out. Now who's fault that is I can not say. I will say however that I have no issues with M2TS files (with 5.1 audio) exported from Vegas.

Sorry. It was tsMuxerGUI that I used.

"Render" means to make something the way you want it, as in to render fat into dripping.

I agree that it looks like the MPEG4 AVC encoding/transcoding is OK (if smart rendering there will be no change) but something seems to be wrong with the m2ts wrapper.