Turn off GPU in Vegas and see if it fixes it.

Just rendered out 20 seconds of it and the problem is still there.

Post a comparison screen shot with the original so we can see what you are calling "artifacts."

Post complete MediaInfo properties for both the source and render. MediaInfo is a utility, not a generic term.

Post Project and Rednder Properties in Vegas. Also, any and all effect, cropping, sizing, frame rate changes, interlace and field order settings, everything.

Right now there are a thousand thangs that could cause loss of detail in the render, including normal compression losses.

Before and After Screenshot: http://puu.sh/qs2te/249855f2d0.jpg

Mediainfo for prerendered raw footage: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_P4P0lip-uUbkJwWXJhdkRUU1E/view?usp=sharing

Mediainfo for rendered, final ver.: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_P4P0lip-uUaUM3UEZZTUhvQkU/view

Render Settings for my latest render (Keep in mind that I have tried multiple different settings to try and fix this problem, this whole project used to look fine with this footage and similiar if not exact settings, and that every other setting in the other tabs is default besides 320bps audio) http://puu.sh/qs37R/f999e2e95f.png

No effects/cropping in the screenshot provided above that has issues, other than two different text overlays, Field Order is none (progressive scan) and Deinterlace method is none.

Do your work in Handbrake, starting at RF 20 in Normal or High profile, and work down until the quality pleases you. That's what I suggest; the rest is background on your previous attempt.

Your Vegas render (Baseline Profile, 240 Mbps, Constant Bitrate) is quite strange, indeed. I can't imagine such a thing could even play, or how it would ever be used. What is your intended use for your video?

Your "raw, pre-rendered footage" says PAL, 59.940 fps, variable frame rate???? That's NTSC, not PAL. Looks like it's already been rendered once before, incorrectly. Something you forgot to mention perhaps? And your new render template says 60.000 fps. When you make a render, the properties must match from door to door.

Also, hardware encoding is stiil enabled in your render, which I suspected all along as being a possible cause of your render problems.

I'm not entirely sure what your first sentence is trying to say, I know what Handbreak is and have used it in the past but I'm not entirely sure how it would be used in this situation. Can you please elaborate?

The reason I have a high Bit rate in my rendering settings is that generally higher bitrate = higher image quality in my experience. When the video is completed it was planned to be uploaded to Youtube which, at lower bitrates and resolutions, absolutely kills the quality of footage with lots of movement/effects because of YTs' compression method.

My raw footage was recorded using Shadow Play, a recording application for Nvidia cards. If the footage file itself has strange properties it wasn't my own doing as it hasn't been touched by me. Although yes, I absolutely could lower my FPS rendering settings to 59.940 but as I said with these either identical or extremely similar settings in the past the footage rendered perfectly.

And for hardware encoding I have tried rendering using CPU only with my GPU completely turned off (which I would really like to avoid because rendering is way faster with my powerful GPU) and the problem still persists.

Not one thing you've said fits anywhere with my experience, which may actually be longer than you think.
Your story keeps growing, so I'll keep it brief, and then I'm done.

-- Handbrake x264 is better than Sony AVC at playable bitrates. *
-- Your VFR video source will work better, with less blurring, in Handbrake than in Vegas. *
-- A 240 Mbps CBR encode is not subjectively better than your 31 Mbps VBR source, or CRF 18 in x264, for that matter,. No free lunches at this joint! *
-- Frame rate is important to be absolutely correct, unless you want dupes, drops, or blurred frames. That part is fourth grade math. *
-- Any bitrate that you throw at Youtube that is higher than 15 Mbps 1080p 60, is a mathematical waste of bandwidth, upload time, and upstream processing time.The extreme bitrate reduction may actually be worse than that from the recommended 12 Mbps upload, and channeling Youtube's available bits to rendering the perfect, sharply defined grain patterns (that's how you say "noise") in your overinflated upload will degrade motion quality even further! Youtube does what it does, and you will not override Youtube's processing ceilings by uploading files with absurd bitrates *.
-- Speed, Size, Quality -- pick any two! Hardware encoding is no match for quality over a CPU, which is slower. I am completely unconvinced that you've been encoding AVC at Baseline 240 Mbps, at the wrong frame rate, with OpenCL and claim perfect results, or even playable files, . . . so suit yourself.

There's still an outdated Vegas-to-Youtube turorial hanging around if you're interested in any of the basics.

* = I've run the controlled tests. Eagerly awaiting yours!
.

Wow, I've never talked with someone who so clearly knew what they were talking about and yet was mostly unhelpful and needlessly rude and the same time.

And yes, even though it goes against your everything you believe/just said I have had renders of this exact footage that have looked great.