okay I've been replacing everything with Apple ProRes 422.

Still got my system freeze after 10-15 mins, but then realized I had an HEVC clip (my splash screen). Replaced that. Still system freeze. Realized I have a Vegas Tiles & Text media on my timeline; replacing that with ProRes next. Freeze occurs both with my pro sound card and onboard sound card.

Other than the crash/freeze which forces me to hard-reset windows, Vegas is a lot more responsive editing ProRes so I can see why so many transcode to it

Does system freeze mean VEGAS freeze? If Windows freezes up I think you have bigger issues than just VEGAS and would troubleshoot broadly with stress tests, 3dMark, etc. VEGAS can't generally cause blue screens or take down Windows itself.

yes Vegas freezing everything inc windows. I may try a new system to rule out hardware/config issues

@ALO

I too also use GoPro's. I have a 5 Black, 6 Black, 7 Black (2 actually), 9 Black, 10 Black, 11 Black, 12 Black, and 13 Black. Now, I don't shoot small length clips, as I use these for my daily walks of around 3.1 Miles/80-90 minutes, and I use the highest resolution and Bit Rate possible. So:

All filmed at Native White Balance, Color Flat (note below), ISO 100-1600 (except 5 only 400 ISO)

5 Black - 4K30p (29.970) bit rate is around 60 Mbps

6 Black - 4K30p bit rate around 66 Mbps

7 Black - 4K30p bit rate around 60 Mbps

9 Black - 5K30p bit rate around 100 Mbps

10 Black - 5.3K30p bit rate around 100 Mbps

11, 12, 13 Black - 5.3K30p bit rate around 120 Mbps (12 & 13 in GoPro Log)

I then use Shutter Encoder to Transcode the .mp4 (AVC or HEVC) container file to ProRes 422 LT, as that has a small enough file size to not be unruly, but with the 11, 12, & 13 Black, also maintains the 10-Bit color.

My signature has both computer specifications, and that ProRes 422 LT .mov container file works wonderful, and has for quite some time with Vegas Pro. I have used those files with VP 17 and up, though currently I am only really using VP 21 (315) & 22 (239) on both computers.

I also have a Canon R6, R6 Mk II, and R7, of which I only shoot C-LOG 3, usually 4K30p (29.970), so the files are HEVC 4:2:2 10-Bit .mp4 files IPB compression, and I transcode them to ProRes 422 .mov, and they work fine also.

So if you notice my computers, they are AMD Threadripper HEDT, meaning no Integrated graphics (iGPU) like the Intel processors that have the 4:2:2 10-Bit hardware decoding (I think 10th Gen on), and my AMD GPU's do not have the hardware decoding/encoding for that either. And no, even if I could find an Nvidia 5000 series card available and not at the extremely disgusting price, I would not change.

yes Vegas freezing everything inc windows. I may try a new system to rule out hardware/config issues

Can you see what Windows Reliability History shows for these critical events?

I see Windows reports 2 hardware errors right before that VEGAS crash... maybe a source to investigate. Have you tried driver updates?

Please share screenshots of the Windows errors and Windows was not properly shut down. When you click it should give more detail as to what happened, and if lucky may give a driver name, etc. that's the cause. I used similar data with NVIDIA support to determine that the generic studio driver was causing problems with my laptop as it shipped with a custom driver and that was crashing Windows.

I believe "not properly" was me holding power button to force shutdown of frozen/nonresponsive system

None of these are telling me much of anything. A recent hang here at least points to a file I can then search for and learn is an Intel graphics driver: