Problem with rendering .avi file

the hard drive cannont transfer the video information fast enough.
It's normal. uncompressed can be useless for playback on un-godlike systems. That's why they invented raid cards and render farms.

Both Mac and PC can play Quicktime 7 codecs. That would be a good choice for universal playback. Try h.264. It can keep excellent quality and small file sizes. If you set it right, you can hardly tell differences between uncompressed and h.264 except that you can play h.264 on old computers smoothly. They use h.264 for a lower quality blue ray too. Mpeg2 is highest blue ray at 40 kbps. Youtube is also converting all its video to h.264. It's like mpeg4 on steroids but can have DV quality. or try quicktime DV. I don't know what your original footage is, but streaming always means quality vs time downloading. Your call. fyi. if your burning dvd's or blu ray, then go mpeg2 highest dvd 8 mbps/dvd or blue ray mpeg2 40kbps.
mpeg2 does not look good at low bitrates. Use h.264 is you're going that route. To compare and decide and save time, render out 40 frames or so and decide before spending 4 hours encoding undesired outpout. Hope this tidbit helps.

My original footage is from DV tape.

I am looking to render the video in a format that most computers can play, even those that do not have any codecs installed.

Also, I might bring the rendered videos into an older computer that uses Premiere 6.5 for some more editing.

Any suggestions?

Toronto Wedding

I am having a similar issue and I have a 10,000 rpm velociraptor and also a WD black 7200. I get the same issue regardless if I use the WD as my scratch disc or not.

Also, this used to work just fine for me and now it is not. I am stumped.