[Norman Black]

With gradient wipe, you use some Photoshop like image editing application to create your graysacle bitmap to describe the transition. The transition typically moves from black to white.

So, if you want something like the star or heart transitions presets operate then you will need to create a radial gradient in the image edit application in the shape of your preferred cross. To get the effect like the star/heart I don’t think it will be as simple as filling a cross shape with a gradient. You will probably have to layer and blend multiple cross gradients at various zoom scales to get the final result.

You might be able to get away with creating a bitmap with a small black cross, simple hard edges, in the center and then slightly larger lighter grey crosses until the screen is filled and you have white at the edges. Then you can try blurring the result to get smooth transitions. You can also use the gradient blur slider in the Vegas gradient wipe to create some blur for a smooth transition.

[Norman Black]

I don’t think it will speed anything up. You can test it if you like.

As for resources, I do not think it will make any difference. Vegas seems to update the preview window on a time and not frame interval and that bitblt (bitmap screen write) should take negligible time.

The screen update is a nice way to be able to tell if a “render as” has hung.

[Norman Black]

The Sony AVC encoder using one of the AVCHD templates to use/edit looks like what you need. The file will be output with an m2ts extension and you may need to change the extension to mts.

Of that does not deal with any index info the camera may have setup as has been discussed.

[Norman Black]

Try starting Vegas while holding the Ctrl+Shift keys down. That will reset Vegas to default preferences. Also answer yes to the option to delete saved data.

[Norman Black]

Have you tried Sony AVC with one of the AVCHD templates?
The specs for those devices say they use the AVCHD format.

Beyond those guesses I would need information about what you need. Like a MediaInfo report of a file the devices can use.

[Norman Black]

[Alex Bell] “I finally got to know how to do what I had asked in the post.”

Great. I was having a hard time understanding exactly what you were trying to accomplish.

[Norman Black]

Looks like it crashed while rendering.

If you have GPU enabled in Video prefs you can try disabling that and rendering.

Also, maybe your computer overheated and caused the crash. Laptops can do this and PC’s that are a bit clogged with dust can overheat as well.

[Norman Black]

In the example video shown you can use the Chroma Key effect and select the color of the shape of Spain in the Chroma key effect. This will make that part transparent. Then anyone on a track underneath will show through the transparent part(s).

That is specifically for that example. Generally speaking, to get something to “show through” a part of a video you need some parts of the upper event to become transparent. There are many ways to create transparency. In Vegas, Chroma Key, Mask generator, Cookie Cutter, Secondary Color corrector and actual event masking can accomplish this. Each have their uses depending on the source material you are trying to create transparency from.

[Norman Black]

We would all like real time or faster renders but that is just not the case for most things. With the Mainconcept encoders in Vegas 2-4x slower than real time is common even with fast CPUs.

For mpeg-2 in Vegas the video quality slider in the render template can greatly affect encoding speed. Dropping that will increase encoding speed and in many cases you will not see a difference is the result. Only experimentation can determine an optimal speed/quality compromise.

[Norman Black]

Depending on your CPU and what your render settings are that render time seems normal.