Vegas Video will render in Xvid, but won't recognize the file

[ohhowhappy]

I'm using Vegas Video 4 to make some clips from Xvid avis. VV won't recognize the video. As a test, I took a .wmv file, edited a clip, and then was able to encode in xvid. However, VV won't even recognize that video, even though the clip plays fine in WMPlayer. I'm stumped. Thanks for your help.

[ohhowhappy]

I went to the Sony forums -- likely should have started there -- and discovered that this is a serious limitation of Vegas. It seems that the workaround is to get a FourCC changer at

Video Help (http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=AVI_FourCC_Code_Changer)

and change the headers to Divx. This seems to work for some people, not for others.

Does this happen in other NLEs?

[jggimi]

This doesn't answer your specific question, but it does point out a procedural problem with your technique that may cause a loss of image quality.

To avoid image degradation when editing, the general consensus is to avoid using lossy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy) codecs for intermediate files, and to use either lossless codecs such as HuffYUV or MJPEG, or use Frameserving (http://www.doom9.org/glossary.htm#frameserving) technologies such as AviSynth.

All MPEG codecs (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or any MPEG-4 codec) are lossy.