My workaround for buggy Vegas 9 has been to go back to using Vegas 6. Beautiful and stable.

Tonight I tried rendering out to 720p intermediate (Vegas's built in CF) and got "Not licensed for Cineform HD encoding. Please visit....".

I've rendered a million things to 720p intermediate. Suddenly it doesn't work.

Likely culprit: CF files stopped playing earlier today for reasons I can't fathom so I downloaded the latest CF player, now I can't render, though CF files play fine again.

What can I do?

What you installed was the RETAIL version. So it seems your two options would be:

1. Pay for the retail version.

2. Uninstall the retail version and reinstall Vegas 6.

I thought the retail version was a freebie? I'm talking about the player. the CF player.

What you installed was the RETAIL version. So it seems your two options would be:

1. Pay for the retail version.

2. Uninstall the retail version and reinstall Vegas 6.

I contacted Cineform and they said the more likely culprit is the CFHD.dll file that installs with vegas 6 and that I should find it in the vegas program folder and delete it. then try rendering out again.

I found the CFHD.dll not in the Vegas folders but in the system 32 folder. I deleted it and rebooted and got the same "Not licensed for CF encoding" and "No compatible video codec was found".

As far as I can tell, the the Neoplayer is free.

I contacted Cineform and they said the more likely culprit is the CFHD.dll file that installs with vegas 6 and that I should find it in the vegas program folder and delete it. then try rendering out again.

I found the CFHD.dll not in the Vegas folders but in the system 32 folder. I deleted it and rebooted and got the same "Not licensed for CF encoding" and "No compatible video codec was found".

As far as I can tell, the the Neoplayer is free.

Actually, you don't have a supported CF encoder at all. And the free Neoplayer supports only playback of CF AVI files, and does not support encoding at all. And the included CF codec in Vegas 6 does not support your particular video format. All this means that you must purchase at least the $130 NeoScene just to get a CF codec that supports encoding.

Actually, you don't have a supported CF encoder at all. And the free Neoplayer supports only playback of CF AVI files, and does not support encoding at all. And the included CF codec in Vegas 6 does not support your particular video format. All this means that you must purchase at least the $130 NeoScene just to get a CF codec that supports encoding.

Okay but that CF codec in Vegas 6 has in fact supported the same format for several years and been a workhorse for me. Suddenly it just stopped working. The folks at Cineform haven't been able to figure it out either and said they'll do a remote access to my PC to try and figure it out.

Probably I'll just reinstall Vegas and see if that straightens it out.

All this means that you must purchase at least the $130 NeoScene just to get a CF codec that supports encoding.

Videoguys.com - CineForm NeoScene for PC and Mac (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/CineForm+NeoScene+for+PC+and+Mac/54E4543435F454E4.aspx): $99.95

Okay but that CF codec in Vegas 6 has in fact supported the same format for several years and been a workhorse for me.

That's why I said uninstall everything from Cineform you installed and then reinstall Vegas to get it back to "normal". Or maybe just do a system restore back to when it worked before you installed Cineform.