Thanks for the clear explanation on the web site.

Apparantly there will be a big difference in the usefullness of video conversion utilities based upon the codecs they support.

With VMS9 as my editor how to I convert .mp4 files that are natively generated by my little Sanyo Xacti camcorder to either MOV or AVI with the cineform (or do you recommend one of the other) codec?

If you want to convert these files for viewing or for web upload, read my Vegas/Vimeo blog post where I show how to do it in either WMV or MP4: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/

Use Cineform and AVI only if you want to use it for intermediate usages, e.g. archiving or editing.

If you want AVI because you just remember these DivX videos that looked cool once, well, Vegas doesn't export to these by default. It recommends WMV or MP4 instead. :)

I read the exporting post which is very helpful. I had never hear of Vimeo which is now bookmarked, spent a lot of enjoyable time watching content so far above the quality of what you normally find on youtube, and I'm not just referring to technical / image fidelity.

Yes, I'm interested in editing the footage from my camcorder which is "native" MP4 format, according to the Sanyo manual. My noob understanding is that if using Vegas MS you want to edit in Cineform/AVI or .MOV format. Also, I'll be mixing in some titling animation from another app which exports to AVI. (plus I think it could also export to .mov)

To be honest, I had no inkling that there were such issues with formats and video. Yes, I knew that some videos would or wouldn't play if you didn't have a codec, but the complexity of things on the editing side was a surprise. I read the official "imports x,y,z exports q,r,s" and figured that should do it.