Spoke too soon - had an email from Sony in my box. Here it is (hope it's o.k. to post this stuff):

"Hello,

Thanks for writing. Try lowering the dynamic RAM preview to 16MB, and then
render again. Does this make a difference? The dynamic RAM preview option can
be found under Options/Preferences on the "Video" tab.

If that doesn't work, try rendering to .avi using the HDV framesize and
framerate using the Cineform codec. Then load that file into a new project and
try rendering again with the HDV 1080i MPEG-2 template.

Also make sure that you have plenty of room on your hard drive. Please let us
know if the problems continue.

Sincerely,

Ted H.
Technical Support
Sony Media Software
1617 Sherman Ave.
Madison, WI 53704"

I believe I have messed about with the dynamic ram preview as well as using different codecs etc in my trouble shooting process but I'll follow his tips to the letter and see what happens.

Thanks for the reply Sony...&....stay tuned....

Thanks for pointing those out, Filmy. I was unaware of Graphedit.

Yoyodyne, have you been able to render to any other format? As in, have you rendered sections as avi and tried to go to m2t from there? Maybe set RAM preview to zero?
This is definitely turning into quite the mystery!

Yep, I've actually been using this machine the whole time to get work done. Having the Mainconcept mpeg encoder messed up created a slight workflow issue but it was no big deal. It's a good thing I'm not making any DVD's right now.

I've just used graph edit (actually it's utility that came with graph edit called Sysenum - thanks Filmy!) to kind of poke around on my system. No Cineform stuff anywhere, which is good because it's uninstalled - everything looks o.k. as far as I can tell - of course I'm not quite sure what i'm looking for.

As far as rendering goes, everything is working normal except for mpeg 2. I rendered a 10 min 24p DV show to a new track with no probs and it played out fine. Also rendered about 8 min of a regular DV show that was about an hour and a half total length - no problems there, played to tape fine.

I have tried to render to m2t from DV, Sony YUV and of course the Cineform codec. In fact I can't render to any mpeg 2 flavor for any length of time without getting the dread error message. I'm setting ram preview to zero and will give you my results shortly - thanks a bunch DSE - You Vegas users are an incredible resource!

Oh, and I can render the cinform hdv codec to Sony YUV no probs and am testing the Sony tech support suggestion - rendering the Cineform hdv to Cineform Avi right now....

I'll report back as soon as it's done

Well the Cineform HDV to Cineform Avi worked fine...

...but rendering the Cineform Avi to m2t failed, my friend the error message said:

"An error occurred while creating the media file avi to hdv mpeg 2 m2t file try 1.mpg.
The reason for the error could not be determined."

I of course re-installed the Sony Cineform Connect HD program so I could play back the Cineform codec to do this test and I had my dynamic ram set on 0. In previous tests with the same result I had dynamic ram set to 16 and also tried max available at 895.

It seems the Mainconcept encoder has something going on it does not like. I did a repair install of Vegas but it didn't do anything. What would happen if I deleted all the mainconcept codecs and then tried a repair install?

Thanks for all the help everybody,
Yoyodyne

latest update:

Just heard from Sony on the "m2t render failing with error message problem". Here is what they said to try:

"There's a fairly easy way for us to find out if the media or the codec is the
issue. Start a new project and add a piece of media to the timeline from the
"Media Generators" tab, color bars for example. Then stretch it out to about
ten minutes or so and try to render it with the 1080i HDV template. Let me know
what happens.

Sincerely,

Ted H.
Technical Support
Sony Media Software
1617 Sherman Ave.
Madison, WI 53704"

Thanks a bunch for getting back to me Ted, I will give this a try as soon as I can & maybe this will help someone else out too.

Update...

Well - I had to give up and go back to a ghost image. My mpeg 2 encoder was on the fritz since the Cineform/Service Pack 2 update and I had to encode some mpeg 2 so....

I was able to encode the generated media to m2t fine - but I couldn't encode anything else with the Mainconcept encoder without the error message - and alas time has run out. I tried going back to my restore point but, gee, what a shocker, that didn't do anything so ghost it is....

thanks a bunch to everyone who tried to help me trouble shoot this sucker,
Yoyodyne

Yoyodyne - my experiences have been very similar - and there does seem to be a size limit cutting in - three different renders I tried have all stopped at 287 Mb.

Like you, I was able to encode generated media to m2t ok, but not from the Cineform avi.
Fortunately I haven't needed a m2t to go back to tape, but this should certainly be fixed soon.

I'm still using the 1.52 version of Connect HD from Sony. Someone mentioned that there was an update from Cineform - can anyone confirm whether this behaves any better?

I can confirm it doesn't!

More info though - I went back to my restore point - reinstalled Vegas 5d - and I still got the error message rendering a 24p DV project to mpeg -2!!!

Holy Crap!

So I uninstalled Vegas 5d and installed Vegas 5b - the same project rendered to mpeg 2 just fine!

I'm now thinking we may have a corrupted Vegas 5d - mine is from the download - I'm in the process of downloading a new 5d and will do a test with that and see what happens.

...and it still doesn't work. Hmmmm. I can confirm that the problem in my case is with 5d. I'm going to try this with 5b (if I can - no hdv presets but I'll try tyoing them in) and see what happens....


(edit)oops had to fix my version letters