I have a Dell dual core AMD Athlon 64x2 5000+ 2.6 processor with 4gb RAM running Vista and am using Sony Vegas Pro 8. I have been using this setup for two years now with no issues.

I am capturing 24p, 30p, and sometimes 60i HDV by firewire from my Sony V1U cameras (and a Canon HV20).

Until recently when I would open a project the time it took to "build peaks" was only a minute or two. Now it takes an hour or more for a 30-60 min project.

Rendering to MPEG 2 NTSC Widescreen 24p for DVD Architect that used to take a few hours at most now counts on up to 20+hours and gave up after a few actual hours.

I have checked for any programs running at startup and uninstalled the few I could find. As far as I can tell nothing has changed on my system.

Any ideas what is going on?

is this on all projects?

what happens if you start a new project - does it take longer to load as well?

how's your hd space?

have you checked that your ram is ok?

Leslie, it has been on all projects lately. I have tried closing them and reopening, rebooting, etc and nothing changes. Computer shows the 4gb's of RAM I have and the hard drive I am rendering to has 30% of it available.

have you installed any codec packs recently, or any other video programs?

maybe it's worth try a reinstall of vegas?

is this a dedicated pc or general purpose? if the former maybe a complete clean reinstall of system and vegas, if the latter, have you checked for virus / malware / etc?

I have current anitvirus scans and have run diagnostics to check my memory, hard drives, etc and they all check out fine. I do regularly download updates from Microsoft that are "criticial" so I am wondering if one of those has created the problem.

If I have to I will reinstall Vegas but hate to because I have Vegas 6 then upgraded that to 8 and you have to install 6 first then the 8. Just having the license for 6 is not enough.

d you have to install 6 first then the 8

news to me?

you should be able to simply uninstall / reinstall 8 directly without worrying about 6 as long as you have your serial number all should go smoothly....

btw, are you having the same problem in 6?

btw2 - haven't (as yet!) ever had a problem with m$ updates....

One other issue that appeared on the latest project was that when my associate got done editing using multicam and would play the preview back everytime cam 1 was up the playback was jerky and skipping frames badly but when cam 2 was up the preview was smooth. Very weird. To test I rendered the first five minutes to see what the final product would look like and it was fine.

However it did take 5 hours to render the five minutes! Doesn't bode well for rendering this 2+ hour project when it is finished.

Have you done an antivirus/malware scan lately?
I recommend the free versions of Malwarebytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) and SUPERAntiSpyware (http://www.superantispyware.com/) for malware scans.

When did you last blow out the dust bunnies?
Is your CPU heating up during renders?
Core Temp (http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/) is an excellent and free tool for checking temps.

Mike,

I regularly run my antivirus scan and have spybot installed for malware. I will chck out the temp thing you mentioned.

I noticed last night that while we were working in Vegas one of the CD/DVD drives kept coming on and running even though there wasn't any media in them. Very srange.