I narrowed down the problem, now it is rendering the movie shot on my Sony video cam (AVCHD.MTS files) but freezes while rendering my GoPro files (mp4 files). I am rendering both to Sony AVC and also to .mp4 formats.
I am just frustrated but trying everything. Few other things to consider is that my computer (at work) is set up thru cloud networking – tho I do render my videos on the C Drive. This should not make any difference as I was able to render the video files shot on my Sony HDR. Anyone had issues rendering GoPro files?!