If you are simply doing a cut-only edit of original DV footage then the AVI file would be far quicker than MPEG2 encoding.

In my experience... in a project with lots of transitions and effects they somewhat equal themselves out a bit. I find the standard NTSC DV avi format is about the same as MPEGS 2's ... or at least very little difference.

What specific AVI template are you using?

VEGAS takes a bit longer than most of the other NLE's. I just read an article on it in emedia. This is not the first test of this kind I've seen that says VEGAS is pretty slow when it comes to rendering.

I did a 30 second, 720x480 title sequnce to export into DVDA for the menu. It had 2 layers of text, 1 layer of a motion background, and 1 layer of audio. It took 2 hours and 10 minutes to render. Also it took 3 times to render completely through. On the first two attempts it would finish it's rendering but when you viewed the final AVI it had no motion after 23 seconds & 25 seconds respectively.

I rendered a 45 minute video with normal cutz & dissolves with a few fancies, nothing big though, and it took me over 6 hours. You have to plan these renders while you're asleep or at work.

- P4, 2.4Ghz, 1024 DDR, ASUS MoBo

Lamont

Expect your renders to take longer in VEGAS. The more Transitions and Layers, and Titles & Such.... Even Longer.

No flippin way! a 45 minute vid took 6 hours, with nothing but cuts and dissolves? Not if you rendered to DV from DV and had no blur, titles, whatever. Ain't no way. Unless the vid was captured with another tool, using some proprietary codec. Simply not possible. Blur, opacity envelopes being moved, color correction, titles all the way through the vid, these could all take long times, but cuts, dissolves only? Not a chance. Just did a 4 minute project on my 2.8 gig laptop, with title all the way through it, plus a bug and color correction. Took 12 minutes, roughly 3 to one. that's with a bug, other titles, and color correction, plus some RED stuff for about 15 seconds for the title.
The test in Emedia was as flawed as most everything else they do. They rendered media from all the same capture. So in Vegas, it was transcoding the whole thing. They started with pjpeg material and went from there. Jan Ozer of PC World did a screwed test as well, rendering to uncompressed. Duh. Let's compare apples to apples. Vegas is about 10-15% slower than other NLE's when working with DV files. But that's the difference.
There is a benchmark render test on the Sundance site. I'd be curious to know what you come out with on that one.
Are you rendering to uncompressed rather than DV? If so, you are gaining nothing, and losing time.

Make sure you are rendering using the NTSC DV template... and NOT the default (uncompressed) version. No way it should take THAT long.

"No flippin way! a 45 minute vid took 6 hours, ..."

The "dot dot dot" continutation of your post is where the actual answer is at.

I've rendered a gaboogle amount of file that were arou 45 minutes and it took about 6 hours to render - but it was due to the compression of the file that I was working with.

So...you are correct sir. Under "normal" circumstances it doesn't take 6 hours to render a 45 minute vid. I forgot what my last straight DV test render was...but it was far less than 6 hours.

Normally working with a Divx File rendering it back to MPEG takes about 6 hours per 45 minutes.

Just rendered a 5 minute 720x480 DVvideo avi with 7 text layers in various places throughout and it took just under 3 hours. But it was built more like compostiting though. At times there were all 6 layers going at varying opacities, speeds, and effects. This was on a box at work: P4, 2.4Ghz, 512DDr.

It is No Secret that VEGAS is one of the slowest renderering NLE's. The speed is made up in the editing. Afterall you walk away while it renders so it was designed to excel while you are there to experience it. During renders... just put the mouse down.

I'm OK with the slower render times. The interface and program workings of VEGAS more than make up for any shortcomings in my opinion.

Lamont