Someone else was asking about this in the DVD Architect forum. I recommend they use TMPGEnc( http://www.tmpgenc.net ) to multiplex the .m2v and the sound files together so that Vegas could load it. But I didn't try it and it seems TMPGEnc won't multiplex .wav files. So I ran a few tests and I think this works(but I made the .m2v file with TMPGEnc so it may not work with real .m2v files):

Open Vegas. Load your wave file. Do a render as and choose the MPEG2 template. This will make an mpeg2 file with the audio but no video. It will be in the layer 2 format that TMPGEnc wants for multiplexing though.

In TMPGEnc choose File->MPEG Tools
Pick the Multiplex tab
Choose MPEG-2 Program (VBR)
Add the .m2v file
Add the .mpg file you saved from Vegas with the audio
Give a new file name on the bottom and press Run

The resulting MPEG will load into Vegas just fine. You can then throw away the audio track and put the better uncompressed wav file audio back(if you want). The key is you have to have an audio stream. It doesn't even need to match the video. You could multiplex a big blank audio file even.

Interestingly I tried saving the wave file as an AC3 in Vegas and multiplexed that with TMPGEnc. The file would then load in Vegas just fine, but without audio since Vegas doesn't seem to read AC3 files/streams. Really wish Vegas would read AC3 files so I could render out a sound track in Acid and load it into vegas to sync up video, instead of having to render the file twice(once wav and once AC3).

There may be other tools that can do the multiplex as well, if you don't like TMPGEnc. The trick is to add SOME audio to the .m2v file. Any tool that can do that will make it loadable by Vegas.

What happens if you just rename the file from *.m2v into *.mpg and import this one?

Marco

"What happens if you just rename the file from *.m2v into *.mpg and import this one?"

You could try that. Another option might be to edit the registry -> if you go through the hklm\current user\software\sonicfoundry & hklm\local machine\software\sonicfoundry keys you'll find a long listing of keys, each with the file type extensions & the plugin used to handle it. As an example, I added the .vob extension to the key values for the main concept mpeg2 & Vegas will then open and handle straight video mpeg2 .vob files - *IF* the main concept stuff can read them.

Another option that avoids transcoding 1st would be to open the .m2v file in DVD2AVI, save the project file, use vfapi to open and convert that DVD2avi project file, pop the avi placeholder file that's created on your timeline in Vegas. In short: you're doing a translation of the original file into something Vegas will use & VFAPI is the translator.

You'll find a bunch of docs, this software, and options at digital-digest.com.

mike