I have Magic Bullet and love the white diffusion preset for many of my projects but MB drops rendering time to about 1 frame a second. This is fine for relatively short projects but for beauty pageants I shoot that can often run 2 1/2 to 3 hours it literally takes days to render.

Is there a way I can achieve a similar effect in Vegas? I'm using Pro 8.

NewBlueFX (http://www.newbluefx.com/) was giving away an FX called Halovison for awhile.
If you were lucky enough to grab it, it does a similar job.
It's now part of a package called Paint Effects and it sells for $140.00.
This is just one of several different packages they have and the "stress" placed on Vegas is considerably less than Magic Bullet.
Combo packages are available.
They have trial versions of everything they offer so I suggest checking them out.
I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Thanks. I'll take a look at it.

There's also a diffusion parameter in NewBlue's Film Pro filter. As Mike says, check out the demos and see if it does what you want. Also take a look at the Glow filter in Vegas - not exactly what you're looking for, I suspect, but used in moderation it gives some lovely effects that i would imagine would work well for a beauty pageant.