I just got this new Vostro 1700 laptop to allow me to edit and render video away from home. It has a 128mb Gforce 8400M and i'd have thought ample processing and ram power. I installed my copy of Vegas 5 which seems to work fine, but when i play the rendered file back it stutters and glitches really badly. However when i transfer the file to my desktop it plays fine...any ideas?

Someone please tell me that i should be able to render video on this system.... am i being unrealistic?

You should be able to... "However when i transfer the file to my desktop it plays fine" The file was rendered on the laptop so it does work fine. You, apparently, just can not play it on the laptop. What are you running on the desktop for a graphics card and OS? Bryan

Which codec are you rendering out to? I have a laptop with a single core Pentium4 @ 2.4GHz, and 1.5GB RAM. I run Premiere Pro (CS3) and After Effects (CS3) without too many problems (renders are slow). I get stuttering playback when using the Quicktime Animation codec or one of the DV codecs, but no problem with most others. Keep in mind that the DV and Quicktime Animation codecs are not really meant to be used for playback on a PC. I usually work with the Quicktime Animation codec, until my final render. The codec used for the final render depends on the intended use of the video. Please let us know if you found someone's advice to be helpful.

Thanks guys, Desktop spec is XPpro with Gforce 7300GS. I render to DV Avi as often i want high quality, and the option to transfer back to tape, or re-edit at a later date. What would be the optimal preffered codec for PC playback then? After looking around I just found some more recent drivers for the video and audio, hopefully these will sort it out...

Ok so i installed the drivers, it seemed much better that evening, but the next day the problem is back, worse if anything... It will not play any video files smoothly anywhere, not in media player or centre, Vegas or Movie maker, (i havent installed anything else to test performance yet). Additionally the USB2 speed is ludicrously slow (450Kbs - 1.5Mbs). It looks like a data read/transfer speed problem but any diagnostic tests appear fine,.. what is going on here?