[Paul Smith]

Thanks so much for the information. I am a little late in responding back. I ended up transferring files to my internal drive and noticed a significant improvement. Still not great however. I have a couple follow up questions:
1) For future reference, is there an easy process to convert source media within Vegas? Sort of like a click on the file and select convert to MXF?

2) When using the preview window, I’ll set my settings to Full, but then when I hit play, it will revert to Half. Can’t quite figure that out.

3) I put in a text event that should add a words to a list over a course of about 20 seconds. It looked and worked great with my preview, but then when I rendered, only the 1st word on the frame appeared and stayed on the screen for the entire 20 seconds by itself. Any ideas?

4) I am considering getting a new laptop as I am enjoying this whole video editing thing. Will my Sony Vegas 11 work on Windows 8? I am on Windows 7 now and cannot find new computers with Windows 7 anymore.

Thanks again with all of the assistance I have received here. This website is a great resource for folks with varying degrees of expertise.