How To Render Standard Definition AVI Files Using Vegas Pro 23 Not AV1

ItsMeRobert wrote on 9/14/2025, 7:34 AM

I have tried searching for an answer, but I have not found one so I am hoping someone can help.

I process a large quantity of standard definition video on a weekly, or even daily, basis. I always render as standard definition AVI in NTSC and PAL formats. Is there a way to render AVI files in Vegas 23 or has it been silently removed by Magix with no ability to re-enable it? I have looked in the deprecated features to see if there is an option that can be enabled, but it is not listed. I have searched in the documentation and on google, but I am not finding anything about AVI output for Vegas 23. If there is a way to do this in the Render dialog as it exists out-of-the-box, it is not obvious to me.

I sure hope that there is a way to enable rendering as AVI, or I am stuck with Vegas 22 forever.

The files I am editing are AVI files. Is there a way to render them as AVI, like I could do in every previous version of Vegas? If it isn't built in, can I somehow install the Microsoft AVI codec?

I expect someone is just going to say to render as MP4. There are several reasons why that is not a solution, while I do not want to have to justify my question, here is the most important thing. For example, I may have a project that has segments that comprise 30 files. I have to render the first, wait, render the second wait, etc. Rendering as AVI is very fast and performs no re-compression. If I have to render everything to MP4, I will be sitting at my desk for days.

After rendering these files, sometimes I need to concatenate some and re-arrange them. AVI can do this without loss of quality and without wasting my type. MP4 will recompress everything and take significantly longer, with me just waiting for the render to finish.

If I do need standard definition MP4 files, then I will always do it as a last step in a batch process. I just start running the conversions from AVI to MP4 and let them run overnight. I can tell you that with all of this legacy media around, standard definition is not dead. As an aside, I still use DVD architect too because there are many people out there still requesting to get video on DVDs.

I would appreciate any help on this.

Thanks,

Robert

Comments

Dexcon wrote on 9/14/2025, 7:57 AM

The Video for Windows (AVI) render option is still available in VP23 by selecting 'Show all formats' via the funnel-looking icon in the Render window:

ItsMeRobert wrote on 9/14/2025, 8:26 AM

Hello Dexcon,

Thank you for the quick response! I was able to find the setting and get the AVI selection.

Have you tested exporting AVI? It appears to be broken, at least in my install.

If I export a 1 minute AVI in Vegas 22, it renders in 3 seconds.

If I export the same 1 minute AVI from the same project in Vegas 23, it doesn't seem to complete. The time got up to 45 minutes when I stopped it and it was only 5% complete. I attached render dialogs from V22 and V23.

Also note that no changes were made to the AVI file, so it displayed the message "recompression not required" in the preview window. I was also coping from one SSD drive to a different SSD drive. In both cases, the source directory and destination directory used in the V22 test and the V23 test was the same on the same machine. Nothing else was using the drives or CPU at the time of the test. I have tried this several times with the same result.

I have compared the settings for the DV output between V22 and V23 and they are identical. I have attached screen shots to show the settings.

Is there some other setting I am missing, or is AVI rendering broken in V23?

Thanks,

Robert

Dexcon wrote on 9/14/2025, 8:50 AM

Using an HD 25 fps default AVI render in VP23, a 13 seconds 4K HEVC video rendered successfully in a fraction over 8 seconds.

Gid wrote on 9/14/2025, 9:02 AM

@ItsMeRobert Hi, can you goto your icon at the top of this page - My Profile & put you PC specs in My Signature, this will then show at the bottom of your comments.

johnny-s wrote on 9/14/2025, 9:07 AM

@ItsMeRobert

In VP23 I rendered out a 1m 17s SD Pal clip to uncompressed using VFW and it took 7 seconds.

Still took the same time if I disabled "Enable no-recompress rendering" in Optiona/Preferences/File I/O.