Hi Musicvid, thanks for your response, no you can't capture with WMM on Windows 7. I can capture on Live. Also Edius and Magix, but not through VMS. Most of the footage is archival. I note also that DVDA plays back the footage with no problems when I put it onto a timeline there.

Most of the footage is archival.

Sorry, I kind of disguised the real question.
How was your original footage captured?
Can you upload a short sample somewhere?

I have a range of PAL SD footage from DVCAM, plain Sony, Canon and Panasonic, 3:4 and 16:9, i and p. Its 720X576 DV compressed and the one other thing it has in common is none of it will play nicely on 9.0b MSP in my 64 Windows 7. Am I the only one running SD footage on these specs? Email me and I'll happily reply drop you a random sample if you think it will help, but because everything plays nicely on my XP system, I don't think it will.

Am I the only one running SD footage on these specs?

Of course not. But since I don't normally work with PAL, I'll defer to someone with more experience with that. Good luck!

If you could provide more specifics than "none of it will play nicely" it would be helpful.

Thanks musicvid. By not playing nicely I meant the video stutters on playback and VMS hangs for a few minutes after every few seconds. After extensive testing (including removing all non Vegas dvsd codecs and putting DV clips rendered from generated media back on the timeline) I've concluded that the Vegas dvsd codec does not work properly in Windows 7 64bit. Note, this is the only problem I have encountered, but for me its a big one. I've put in a Sony tech support request, and I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with these specs who is having the same or no problems.

Oh, you have a preview issue. I don't have Win 7, 64 bit, or work with PAL, so all I can offer is the generic advice:

1) Match your project properties exactly to your media properties. You do this by clicking on the yellow "folder" icon in Project Properties and selecting one of your media files.

2) Set your Preview to Preview/Auto and disable "Scale to match output."

I don't know the exact cause of your problem, but as a stable short-GOP, low compression codec, DV-AVI should be problem-free even on systems much less powerful than yours.

There is no logical explanation for being able to preview AVCHD successfully but not DV-AVI, unless there is something wrong with your files. There is a setting in Preferences called "Ignore third-party DV codecs" that you may want to play with. Suggest you continue pursuing this with Sony tech support, and post results back here. Honestly, this is the first such report I have seen in eight years here.

Thanks again Musicvid. "There is no logical explanation for being able to preview AVCHD successfully but not DV-AVI, unless there is something wrong with your files" - or, as I suggest, there is something wrong with DV codec implementation in Vegas on Windows 7 64. You have suggested some obvious possible solutions, none of which have been effective. DV in VMS has run without any problems on my XP system for years, DV runs in non-Sony applications in Windows 7, no issues in GSpot and every other codec I''ve tried in VMS has been problem free. The choice for too many of us has been to give up Vegas or give up Windows 7, and while I totally admire the Vegas workflow...
Anyhow, I'll let you know.

OK, after trying everything I could think of , I decided it had to be a hardware problem and took the computer back to the shop, where finally after also deciding it might not be software they replaced everything in turn without result. But then they turned off ahci before reinstalling windows and that fixed it. No-one is game to turn on ahci after win install, and its running happily and just as fast in RAID mode, so this might be a fix if anyone else has this problem. I do note that if you switch to the MS DV codec in preferences everything video goes red, but no big deal, just don't use the MS codec.

You never want to use the MS DV codec anyway. It's garbage.