Talking about Particle Illusion, great application. I use it all the time.

However, It will only use only 1 process core and further you cannot select your temp working folder so it will use C: drive by default all which slow you PC down. But if you render out to another drive then that does help.

I hear they are working on a new version which hopefully will address these issures.

I hear they (PI) are working on a new version which hopefully will address these issures. Oh really?? My ears are wide open!!

Grazie

Hi,

You mentioned 4GB of RAM and the details is Physical Memory 2097MB - are you using the whole 4GB?

I had similar problems - on 70 minutes HD project. Found out that the problems was with stills (JPEGs) and ended by using render to a new track of all the stills sections and REMOVING the stills from the project. After that all worked fine.

Udi

Confuscious say---16 gig of memory=happy Vegas person. No Problemo! I say that too.
JJK

As far as file locations go, I generally capture to the internal striped array and render to an external striped array (G-RAID2 1TB). That way when it comes to rendering, it is reading from one drive and writing to another - lessening the bottle-neck.

UPDATE

Well still no successful renders but some more info and possible hope.
Project 1
This is 1 hour long and is the least complicated of the two. In general there is an audio track (wav), jpeg track and text. It does get more complex in places, maybe up to 9 tracks for brief periods.
This project rendered once, but after putting it thru DVDA and being re rendered there, I wasn't happy with the quality.Hence the re render.
Previously this project froze at 25 % but following the advice from David McKnight, I resized the jpegs around this section. It then rendered to 70%, I resized the images around this section and rendered again. This time it only made it to 50%. I will check the images there and try again.

Project 2
This one is more complex but i have been gradually breaking it into smaller sections, which is not that easy as there are a lot of crossfades. Anyway I am attempting to render a 20 minute section.It still freezes/crashes. My only success here is that I have 2 crash logs which I will post later.

There is a lot of info in this thread which will hopefully be constructive for all Vegas users and I intend to try out most of the suggestions, some general points though.
1. Problems are the same using Vegas 8b or 8c
2. Problems are the same using Quad core or Dual Core
3. The application is on a different drive to the data
4. The material wont render to any file format that I have tried (especially project 2)

I suspect that this is a memory problem as some people have suggested but I dont have enough knowledge of the subject to confidently back this up. Udi has just pointed out that my new system spec only shows 2gb, its supposed to have 4gb, I will check this out. I got this new system for the horsepower and memory in an effort to resolve these problems.
I considered Vista as an OS but there seems to be a lot of contradictory opinions and unanswered questions about plug ins.

There are suggestions here also to render sections to .avi for example. I would wonder what the quality it would be like by the time it gets converted then to MPEG and then re rendered to DVD.

Thanks
Derm

If you can render to AVI this is the way I would go. The quality should be totally fine. Render AVI and create a new project to render to a DVD-A compatible mpeg2 file and it shouldnt have to re-render anymore in DVD-A.

Working on SD I render a master AVI file and from that render my mpeg2, mp4 etc. files as rendering from single AVI file rather then a vegas project full of titles, crossfades etc. is much much quicker.

Sami

Recarding Vista Im using Ultimate 64-bit and all my plugins work great on V8.0c. You can't use 32-bit plugins in V8.1 64-bit though so I really havent had any use for that yet (It's a shame since it previews and renders a bit faster and better then 8.0c).

So far Ive been really happy with Vista but havent really done any big projects on it yet as I just got it.

Sami

I'm just saddened with how low our expectations have gotten for Vegas. Leslie said "i think we all expect a nle nowadays to work with whatever we throw at it - but this is simply not true in practice."

The problem is that this USED to be true with Vegas. In versions 3-7 you could pretty much throw ANYTHING in the timeline and you wouldn't have any problems. Suddenly in version 8 there are varying problems depending on your hardware configuration, what versions of certain programs you have installed, etc. Oftentimes these problems are impossible to narrow down - even after following all the advice given by the kind patrons of this forum.

SONY: Please bring the pre-8 stability back to Vegas so I can start using it again!!!

LightAd, regarding PI, you said:

However, It will only use only 1 process core and further you cannot select your temp working folder so it will use C: drive by default all which slow you PC down. But if you render out to another drive then that does help.

I don't have time to check the app in full, so I don't know about the non-customizable temp folder location issue. That said, I don't recall a setting in PI for that, so you're probably right.

On the other hand, I did move all my emitters to my D:\ drive too -- even though PI has them by default in its Program Files directory. Basically it's a manual duplicate of the emitters to which I have to copy/paste the new ones over.



I second the comment of yeah-that-would-be-cool. My FX are simple but usually they have high number of particles, so PI gets slow. Sometimes "Arrrrgh!" slow.

. In versions 3-7 you could pretty much throw ANYTHING in the timeline and you wouldn't have any problems. Suddenly in version 8 there are varying problems depending on your hardware configuration, what versions of certain programs you have installed, etc. Oftentimes these problems are impossible to narrow down - even after following all the advice given by the kind patrons of this forum.

That sort of problem is also what happened to Vista, and to a vastly lesser degree. OS X Leopard.

Microsoft is now going full bore on rebuilding Windows to become an inexpensive minimalist but reliable core with lots of more loosely connected bits that have to be downloaded from MS, if and when needed. This is Windows 7, and they're trying desperately to get it out even next summer if they can (this is a big paradigm shift for a company that has developed an immense bureaucracy over many years).

In the meantime, Apple is working on getting Snow Leopard out before that. New features? What's that? The focus is completely on solidity instead.

Talk about a groundbreaking change in the computer software industry. Solidity instead of feature diarrhea.

What will they think of next? :O)

Especially Windows is way geekier than it should be.

Imagine if cars were this way (actually they were this way in the early decades, where if you wanted to drive the approx. 100 miles from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, you had to know to bring 3-4 spare tires).

i had a similar problem, which i called th red screen of death.
i would get a message that an unknown error occurred and BOOM!
or i could just select a photo in the timeline and the program would just vanish!
no message, no hint of a problem, just clean desktop. Bizarre behavior for
the program.

i had 3 projects each with about 350 photos, music, sound effects, video.
i reworked each project about 5 to 10 times over a 4
month period looking for the solution.

it was the photos!
the digital photos were 8 megs and the scanned photos were 10 meg each.
i reduced the resolution to 92 dpi and the size to 1280 by 1024.
file sizes dropped signifiantly.
no more red screen of death no more BOOM every thing worked fine.
no more "unexpected error" (does that mean they expect errors?)

try reducing the size of the photos!
it worked for me.

Good Luck!

The resolution make no difference in video.

A 1280x1024 photo at 72 dpi is handled identically to a 1280x1024 2400dpi image: as a 1280x1024 image.

A large number of images at excessive resolution is the most common source of these problems in any NLE.

Derm, we can't see your rig specs so we can't give you proper advice.

You did mention 8b and 8c, both written for 32bit OS and if you're using XP 32 bit then your PC will only be able to address 3.2 GB of RAM no matter how much RAM you have. This I found out somewhere in these forums. You say that you can only see 2 GB and that you have 4GB so that should be a warning bell.

I also agree with the JPG size advice. Also I use Particle Illusion and if I render out using different codecs then Vegas just hangs with no informative error message. Trial & error I found out which codecs to use.

More sytem info below. Onre thing that doesn't make sense to me is that the originaaaal specs that I reported in my first post show the physical memory at 2.097.1 MB. This information was lifted from "About" section under "computer" in DVDA. The info shown below is lifted from system information and shows physical memory at 4,096.00 MB. Why would I get 2 differeent reports from the same machine?

Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name CARILLON
System Manufacturer System manufacturer
System Model P5QC
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10 GenuineIntel ~2999 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0803, 26/06/2008
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)"
User Name CARILLON\Dermot Walsh
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 4,096.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 2.56 GB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 4.60 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

[Hardware Resources]



[Conflicts/Sharing]

Resource Device
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 PCI bus
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 Direct memory access controller

I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

IRQ 23 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A34
IRQ 23 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3A

IRQ 16 Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21
IRQ 16 NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
IRQ 16 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A37
IRQ 16 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
IRQ 16 Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 6 - 3A4A
IRQ 16 VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

IRQ 17 Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 1 - 3A40
IRQ 17 Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 5 - 3A48
IRQ 17 Atheros AR8121/AR8113 PCI-E Ethernet Controller

Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xFFFFFFFF PCI bus
Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xFFFFFFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21
Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xFFFFFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

IRQ 18 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A39
IRQ 18 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3C
IRQ 18 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A36

IRQ 19 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A35
IRQ 19 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
IRQ 19 Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller

Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI bus
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

Memory Address 0xFA000000-0xFE8FFFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21
Memory Address 0xFA000000-0xFE8FFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT


[DMA]

Resource Device Status
Channel 4 Direct memory access controller OK

[Forced Hardware]

Device PNP Device ID

[I/O]

Resource Device Status
0x00000000-0x00000CF7 PCI bus OK
0x00000000-0x00000CF7 Direct memory access controller OK
0x00000D00-0x0000FFFF PCI bus OK
0x0000B000-0x0000BFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
0x000003B0-0x000003BB Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
0x000003B0-0x000003BB NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0x000003C0-0x000003DF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
0x000003C0-0x000003DF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0x0000BC00-0x0000BC7F NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0x0000A800-0x0000A81F Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A37 OK
0x0000A880-0x0000A89F Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A38 OK
0x0000AC00-0x0000AC1F Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A39 OK
0x0000D000-0x0000DFFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 5 - 3A48 OK
0x0000DC00-0x0000DC07 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
0x0000D880-0x0000D883 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
0x0000D800-0x0000D807 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
0x0000D480-0x0000D483 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
0x0000D400-0x0000D40F Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
0x0000C000-0x0000CFFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 6 - 3A4A OK
0x0000CC00-0x0000CC7F Atheros AR8121/AR8113 PCI-E Ethernet Controller OK
0x0000A080-0x0000A09F Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A34 OK
0x0000A400-0x0000A41F Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A35 OK
0x0000A480-0x0000A49F Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A36 OK
0x0000EC00-0x0000EC7F VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
0x00000A79-0x00000A79 ISAPNP Read Data Port OK
0x00000279-0x00000279 ISAPNP Read Data Port OK
0x00000274-0x00000277 ISAPNP Read Data Port OK
0x00000020-0x00000021 Programmable interrupt controller OK
0x000000A0-0x000000A1 Programmable interrupt controller OK
0x00000081-0x00000083 Direct memory access controller OK
0x00000087-0x00000087 Direct memory access controller OK
0x00000089-0x0000008B Direct memory access controller OK
0x0000008F-0x0000008F Direct memory access controller OK
0x000000C0-0x000000DF Direct memory access controller OK
0x00000040-0x00000043 System timer OK
0x00000070-0x00000071 System CMOS/real time clock OK
0x00000061-0x00000061 System speaker OK
0x000000F0-0x000000FF Numeric data processor OK
0x00000290-0x0000029F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000010-0x0000001F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000022-0x0000003F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000044-0x0000004D Motherboard resources OK
0x00000050-0x0000005F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000062-0x00000063 Motherboard resources OK
0x00000065-0x0000006F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000072-0x0000007F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000080-0x00000080 Motherboard resources OK
0x00000084-0x00000086 Motherboard resources OK
0x00000088-0x00000088 Motherboard resources OK
0x0000008C-0x0000008E Motherboard resources OK
0x00000090-0x0000009F Motherboard resources OK
0x000000A2-0x000000BF Motherboard resources OK
0x000000E0-0x000000EF Motherboard resources OK
0x000004D0-0x000004D1 Motherboard resources OK
0x00000800-0x0000087F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000500-0x0000057F Motherboard resources OK
0x00000060-0x00000060 PS/2 Keyboard OK
0x00000064-0x00000064 PS/2 Keyboard OK
0x00009C00-0x00009C07 Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
0x00009880-0x00009883 Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
0x00009800-0x00009807 Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
0x00009480-0x00009483 Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
0x00009400-0x0000941F Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
0x00000400-0x0000041F Intel(R) ICH10 Family SMBus Controller - 3A30 OK

[IRQs]

Resource Device Status
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 16 Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
IRQ 16 NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
IRQ 16 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A37 OK
IRQ 16 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
IRQ 16 Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 6 - 3A4A OK
IRQ 16 VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 21 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A38 OK
IRQ 18 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A39 OK
IRQ 18 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3C OK
IRQ 18 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A36 OK
IRQ 22 Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio OK
IRQ 17 Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 1 - 3A40 OK
IRQ 17 Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 5 - 3A48 OK
IRQ 17 Atheros AR8121/AR8113 PCI-E Ethernet Controller OK
IRQ 23 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A34 OK
IRQ 23 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3A OK
IRQ 19 Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Universal Host Controller - 3A35 OK
IRQ 19 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 19 Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 1 PS/2 Keyboard OK
IRQ 5 Intel(R) ICH10 Family SMBus Controller - 3A30 OK

[Memory]

Resource Device Status
0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI bus OK
0xA0000-0xBFFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
0xA0000-0xBFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0xD0000-0xDFFFF PCI bus OK
0xD0000000-0xFFFFFFFF PCI bus OK
0xD0000000-0xFFFFFFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
0xD0000000-0xFFFFFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0xFA000000-0xFE8FFFFF Intel(R) 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port - 2E21 OK
0xFA000000-0xFE8FFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0xFD000000-0xFDFFFFFF NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT OK
0xF9FFFC00-0xF9FFFFFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3C OK
0xF9FF8000-0xF9FFBFFF Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio OK
0xF8F00000-0xF8FFFFFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 1 - 3A40 OK
0xFEA00000-0xFEAFFFFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 5 - 3A48 OK
0xFEAFFC00-0xFEAFFFFF Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller OK
0xFE900000-0xFE9FFFFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family PCI Express Root Port 6 - 3A4A OK
0xFE9C0000-0xFE9FFFFF Atheros AR8121/AR8113 PCI-E Ethernet Controller OK
0xF9FFF800-0xF9FFFBFF Intel(R) ICH10 Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3A3A OK
0xFEBFF800-0xFEBFFFFF VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
0xFEBFE000-0xFEBFEFFF OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
0xFED08000-0xFED08FFF Motherboard resources OK
0xFED1C000-0xFED1FFFF Motherboard resources OK
0xFED20000-0xFED3FFFF Motherboard resources OK
0xFED50000-0xFED8FFFF Motherboard resources OK
0xFED00000-0xFED003FF High precision event timer OK
0xFFB00000-0xFFBFFFFF Intel(R) 82802 Firmware Hub Device OK
0xFFF00000-0xFFFFFFFF Intel(R) 82802 Firmware Hub Device OK
0xFFC00000-0xFFEFFFFF Motherboard resources OK
0xFEC00000-0xFEC00FFF Motherboard resources OK
0xFEE00000-0xFEE00FFF Motherboard resources OK
0xF9FFE800-0xF9FFEFFF Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller OK
0xF9FFF400-0xF9FFF4FF Intel(R) ICH10 Family SMBus Controller - 3A30 OK
0xFED14000-0xFED19FFF System board OK
0xE0000000-0xEFFFFFFF Motherboard resources OK
0x0000-0x9FFFF System board OK
0xC0000-0xCFFFF System board OK
0xE0000-0xFFFFF System board OK
0x100000-0xCFFFFFFF System board OK

"A large number of images at excessive resolution is the most common source of these problems in any NLE."

I agree, reducing the number and size of stills has been the biggest help in increasing my overall vegas stability.

"I do not have any crash logs for the new pc as it usually just freezes up or vanishes off the screen completely."

Does this imply you've looked in the Windows Event Viewer and there are no strange "System" or "Application" events at the time of the crash?

If there are, it might provide addtional clues.

...Jerry

I'd suggest setting your preview RAM to about 400mb and then watch to see if it crashes and if it does make note of the frame its working on in the preview pane and see if there's anything going on there. Also take a look at Windows task manager and see if you are against the wall on RM or VM - that can create problems.

I haven't had any problems with MPEG2 rendering - on the other hand AVC has taken me quite a bit of tweeking / investigating to get a long complex file to render - but I got it figured out after a few evenings playing with it.

I was testing my new quad core with an assortment of files. Vegas P8b crashed multiple times at ~70%. I narrowed it down to the .MOV files. I have since had similar prolems with .MOV files in our dual and single cores on the timeline when using pan/crop. It isn't necessarily Vegas as Quicktime actually does the decoding. Once I dropped the MOVs to AVIs. Viola. I feed thirty V8 editors here at work. Still image file size, in general and MOV files (esp.on a quadcore) are the only real issues we,ve had.

GB-)

Derm:

I haven't tried DebugMode Frame Server but it seems like it might work to liberate your trapped video from Vegas. My understanding is that it serves up the video to another application without rendering and let the other application render it.

See this: http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/

Here's a tutorial for an example which passes the video to virtualdub which does the actual rendering: http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-video/Vegas-Xvid.htm


By the way, I am having my own problems - I captured a one hour video from my digital-8 camera and it split it up through scene detection to 100 different avi's. (I realized only later you can turn that sc detection off). When I try to render it using Sony Vegas 9 as uncompressed into one file it results in more than 110 gb file!! I'm not sure why I can't save it as one joined AVI. When I try to use XVID or DVX it gives me errors. I'll probably just recapture again. I've already tried about 5 different major editing packages and they all have their serious problems. I had hoped that Vegas would be different but it seems to suck in the render area.

When I try to render it using Sony Vegas 9 as uncompressed into one file it results in more than 110 gb file!!

Don't use uncompressed.
Render it as DV-AVI and the file size will be around 13 gb.

I'm not sure why I can't save it as one joined AVI.

You can.
Put all the clips on the timeline and render (DV-AVI).
It'll come out as a single AVI.

I had hoped that Vegas would be different but it seems to suck in the render area.

If you do things properly, it doesn't :-)

Mike

Hi Derm - I'd love to hear how you're going. After offering some ideas earlier in this thread, I've had a couple of nightmare days myself, where I could not render a 65 minute EX1 HD project to mpeg2 for DVD.
I had various problems - out of memory error messages, Vegas locking up at a particular frame (not always the same), and Vegas suddenly disappearing like a popped bubble.

I tried rendering to avi - still crashed .... I uninstalled 8.0c and reinstalled 8.0b - what a pain - all those plug-ins to reinstall as well .... no change, still crashed.

Eventually I had a look at the stills I mentioned earlier in the thread - the client supplied them from a Mac, and they kept crashing Vegas, whilst I was trying to edit. So I re-saved them as new files on my PC, which solve3d the editing problem, BUT - I hadn't done any rendering at that point, and, sure enough, it was "still the stills" that were the problem - they were too big. Many were more than 6000 x 4000, so I've just gone through again and reduced their size to nearer the project resolution of 1920 x 1080, and - wonder of wonders - it's just rendered!

This may or may not be related to your problem, but I think the principle is that it's almost always something to do with the content of the timeline.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

Peter