Sony Vegas 11.0 renders unplayable/broken videos.

[Mike Kujbida]

Define “broken”.
What are your computer specs (OS, CPU speed, RAM, # and size of hard drives)?

[Jon Lasso]

i7 2600k
8 GB RAM
Radeon HD 5770

I actually just found out that it only happens when it’s an HD .avi file.

Broken as in what I just said. If I convert it with a video converter for some reason the output will be a black screen with just the audio. If I play the render on VLC media player it’s all choppy and has to load for the first play but gets fine on the second play (but after a few minutes I have to load it again as if it was the first time playing it).

[Al Bergstein]

So make sure your project settings are right, and then try rendering to the “standard” Main Concept render engine. I’ve heard from others and experienced it myself sometime, that rendering to Windows Media Player is not a good option, though WMP can play the MP4 files that Vegas produces through M.C. just fine.

You might want to make sure you have the latest Windows Media Player installed. Just like with Quicktime, different versions of the player can give different results. Which is why it’s better to just output to mp4, IMHO. At least to start with.

You also didn’t mention if you are rendering to your C (OS) drive. Choppiness can occur as your computer tries to play a media file from the OS drive. Always render your stuff (or at least play it) from a secondary drive, so you don’t end up competing with the OS, which is doing all sorts of communication most of the time with the drive you have it loaded on (usually C). I have a 1 TB D drive that I render all videos to. I then move them to other RAID storage for safe keeping.

Your system by and large seems adequate, so perhaps it’s just finding the right combination of physical drive locations and the right codec. Good luck.

Al