Hi,

I am surprised that the media will not import since it is a quad-core processor, albeit a very old one. It may have something to do with it being a Xeon chip. You don't mention what video codecs you are using specifically but you could try transcoding your footage with a free utility like "Handbrake" and see if you can successfully import the footage then. You can often pick up off-lease i5 quad-cores for very cheap these days. As to a refund, I seem to recall something about a snowball's chance...

Thanks all!

Render output is simply 1920x1080, and all the footage was shot there (way under the cameras capabilities) but this is just for a silly YouTube video demo. Its long, though, at 30 minutes, so there are multiple stitched clips. I didn't do anything crazy with plugins, just lowered brightness and increased contrast with the built in one. I guess I could start deleting tracks and see when it succeeds.

Its been crashing all day on v13 and v18, typically around the sample percentage complete. This is pretty embarrassing. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask for the refund.

In the meantime, i'll try it on my sons 3090 and cry when it renders in probably 2 minutes.

There is a possibility that one of the video events is corrupted media. A good way to check this is to go to Vegas Pro's Explorer window and look at the video media in 'Thumbnails' view. All the thumbnails should have a sample image of the recorded scene, but a corrupted video event may show as an icon of some sort rather than a sample image. This was the case when I was experiencing a similar problem to yours many years ago. I recall that I even went into Windows safe mode at the time before I discovered the problem media event.

As to a refund, I seem to recall something about a snowball's chance...

Please see this comment regarding the current refund policy. (See also "a real-life experience" here, posts #11 and 13.)

Did you try a reset and cache clear? Double-click the desktop icon while holding control and shift. Once prompted to clear the cache, accept.

If something is wrong with the project, what about opening it in 13, opening 18 and then selecting all and cutting and pasting the timeline into 18? Sometimes that can solve issues with corrupt projects.

@Shane-Etter The fact it sticks around the same place both in V13 and V18 suggests the media at that point is causing problems. From the preview window you should be able to identify the area on the timeline that is involved. What is the media at that point and post its media info https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

(Trying the copy/paste idea now, which is a BRILLIANT workaround)

I will also try clearing cache now.

I should have been more specific: I've tried to render this in v13 about 20 times. It has twice stopped at 21%, once at 5%, once at 9%, overnight at 38%, etc... so not exactly the same point, nor is the frozen frame at a transition or anything.
Once I manually cancel the render--- which refuses to end--- then I CTRL-ALT-DEL to end Vegas, the rendered portion exists, but is barely playable.