The main issue that gives you long render times can be found in the render template selection screen, while there's plenty of good codecs, there's only a few that, besides giving you great quality, don't take up hours for a 10+ minute video. To fix this, you're going to have to use a template with a codec that produces a larger file size as a compromise:



Click File in the top left corner, then on the dropdown click Render As...





A big menu opens showing every preset and category available, you need to search
for the Sony AVC/MVC (*.mp4,*.m2ts,*.avc) category.



As you can see, my preset says 1080p60FPS, yours will say something along
the lines of Internet 1920x1080-30p.

This is because I have customized my preset and set a custom name.



These are the settings I personally use for YouTube videos, feel free to copy them aswell:




Note: I now use Sony XAVC / XAVC S (*.mxf,*.mp4) since it's a little better in quality, but that makes rendering take longer.

I'll show you my current configuration for the XAVC S codec, you first need to find the
XAVC S Long 1920x1080-59.94p Preset, then edit it like shown below:




Bonus: Another trick that helps a lot for rendering and FX preview is selecting a limited area then doing Shift+M, which prerenders a specific section of the video and consumes storage space (make sure you set the appropriate location for this under the Prerendered files folder option found in Files->Properties...), this helps when you have loads of effects. You could also try Shift+B, which stores it in RAM and makes playback way smoother, in turn allowing you to preview the effect as it would be seen after the render, without eating up space. Use these sparingly since you cannot prerender or store in RAM large portions of the video.


Also, if you thought of using GPU Acceleration, which would be extremely helpful for rendering, it's not supported anymore in VEGAS 14, I wouldn't recommend it since it isn't stable and produces visual artifacts anyway.

Click File->Properties... or do Alt+Enter.

The Project Properties menu should show up, I have my settings right here and I suggest you make additional changes depending on the project:





Note: What's important is to set the Deinterlace Method and Pixel Order to None, and to never use a Resample Mode, which makes the project look blurry and takes longer to render, it does makes sped up footage look great (its usage should be limited to those scenes).