Sounds to me that you have Vegas Movie Studio 9 or variant, not Vegas Pro 9.

"I can't import M2TS without crashing, I can upload Mpeg-4 in sound only but no video,"

This is not true for both Vegas pro or Vegas movie Studio. I have no such issues on either program so it must be your machine. It sounds like you're missing a codec, or possibly have a codec conflict of sorts.

Did you by any chance install one of those free universal codec packs?

-- If you spent $120 then you do not have Vegas Pro, but one of the Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 versions, and you will get your best response on the Movie Studio forums, since very few of us own your version of the software. But since you are here,

"I can't import M2TS without crashing, I can upload Mpeg-4 in sound only but no video,"

Just a silly question for you:

-- What version of Quicktime player is installed on your machine?

**I downloaded K-Lite Codec Pack (free download) and used all default settings. I downloaded this so maybe it would help allow me to view the video in Vegas 9, but still I get no video.

**I'm not sure what the bandwith or resolution is. I record everything from a Hauppauge HD PVR. Here is my settings for everything I see.

Input Resolution: 1280x720

Current Encoding Bit Rate: 8Mbps

Audio: Dolby Digital (AC3) 2 Channels

Device Settings (Properties):

Video Decoder: NTSC_M

Signal Detected: 1

Lines Detected: 720

VCR Input: Box checked
Output Enable: Box checked

***I'm not sure what Quick Time Player version I'm using, but I just downloaded the update for it through my iTunes update. So I know it's current. My M2TS files play a little choppy but when I convert them to Mpeg-4 they play smoothly. I'm also playing them in Quicktime not Windows.

***My OS is Windows XP 32bit.

***My version of of Vegas, is Vegas 9b.. Not sure if it's 32 bit or 64 bit.

***My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1501. I know, I know, it's a bit old, but it's practically stripped of all big programs. Only iTunes rivals the size of Vegas 9. So I know I have space. I also upgraded from 1GB to 2GB Ram.

Guys, in all seriousness I have become so frustrated with this whole thing I almost just feel like giving up. If there is any other answers on what I have please ask. I will also post this in the Vegas Movie Studio forum. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

What is it that you're recording with the Hauppauge HD PVR? Is this off-the-air HD television programming?

I'm one of those guys who is into recording gameplay off of my console(PS3). I have it at 1280x720. LOL I know it's kinda nerdy, but it's a fun hobby if I could only get this to work. I can't tell you how frustrated I am/....LOL I can only laugh at myself now.

Can you post a short file somewhere for download?

Okay, so the computer is probably not too powerful. I gather it has a Turion processor and you're working off a single hard drive, which also holds your system's swap file. Hardware-wise, you could use a bit more power but this ought to work on that machine.

I really don't know what the quirks are of VMS, but with Vegas Pro there were problems with quicktime that required you to go back a few versions to something like QT7.6 (off the top of my head). You probably can't do that without also downgrading Itunes. (For Vegas Pro, the quicktime solution of the moment is to upgrade Vegas to 9.0d.)

Generally, the Vegas timeline has more overhead than its trimmer or than a standalone player. The timeline just has more to do when it plays video and it often won't perform quite as well as other options, so if your computer just barely cuts it then the timeline won't perform well.

Your solution is probably in the codec you use. When Vegas plays the audio and not the video that's a sure sign that the video codec isn't available to Vegas, even though external players may be fine.

In general, MPEG2 and AVC or h.264 are processor intensive so transcoding to something else may make editing possible. Usually, an easy to edit codec creates larger files on disc so if you go the transcoding route you may be dismayed to find that the new files use up tons of disc space. Check in the VMS forum to see if anyone has advice about this, they may have a better idea of what codecs are usable.

Anyway, the things I'd look at are downgrading quicktime, and if that's not possible or not helping then you can test out transcoding the media from one codec to another.

You also mentioned the size of the applications on disc, saying that VMS is only rivaled by Itunes in the amount of storage space required. I want to point out that you're talking about hard disc storage space here, not RAM workspace. While it's important to have storage space, RAM space is what would affect playback, especially if your system is actually using swap hard disk space to make up for a lack of RAM. I don't know about VMS, but in Vegas Pro this could happen if the RAM Preview preference is set to use LOTS of RAM. If you have this setting, try dialing it down to 16MB or maybe even zero MB.

If Vegas was using a lot of swap space (aka Page File) you'd see a few things:
--In Windows Task manager you'd see the size of the page file growing as you used Vegas
--Your computer's disk activity light would be blinking a lot more than it might when playing the same file in quicktime.

Since you're on a laptop with a single hard drive, Vegas would be reading video off the same drive that the page file is written to. If both are happening at the same time then you won't get good playback.

Rob Mack

It would really be nice if you could confirm what Vegas you have, at $120 we can only assume that it is Vegas Studio Platinum 9 and not Vegas Pro 9, please look at you box and see what it says.

That would make the troubleshooting much eaiser.

I really don't know what the quirks are of VMS, but with Vegas Pro there were problems with quicktime that required you to go back a few versions to something like QT7.6 (off the top of my head). You probably can't do that without also downgrading Itunes

Rob, I can confirm that QT 7.6.4 works with Vegas Pro AND the latest iTunes as this was my workaround before 9.0d came out.

Mike

"I have the required specs for the software and I have registered my software so I can't even sell it, hell I can't even give it away. So essentially I spent $120 for a box and a disk. "

Did you read the license? Sony has the most consumer-friendly licensing that I've ever seen, and you can sell the SW and transfer the license to another owner.

But before you do that, find a freeware program named "gspot" to see what codec your video is encoded with.

You can get Gspot from http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ -- I still had it in the paste buffer from answering another problem for a friend in a different forum :-)

mikey

"I record everything from a

That's most likely your problem.
I'm not sure what it is with Hauppauge but to hear of crashing with these files is not uncommon. It's heard and talked about on a number of different forums


You may get some hints from this old thread (lots more like this out there)
http://vreel.net/board/archive/index.php/t-1858.html

That's most likely your problem.

Well, that was most likely your original problem.
But now since you didn't answer Rob's and my questions, there are two new problems that you need to take care of first. See the Movie Studio forum for a detailed response.