Some really great ideas you got there leemo, with colors and spacing.
I see it now, a lot software has organized shortcuts in contest menus with lines or spaces, but none of it are present in this case.
Working right now on some further ideas.

VLC does not work with the ficv codec. You must use a different player to play those files in your recording folder! Your particular file might still be corrupt though.

To me, the first generation of i7 CPU's does not seem to be supported. My i7 920 does not play with any Intel QuickSync and it most likely your i7 930 cannot do either. :| Might wait and see if they gonna "unlock" the higher resolutions, without the need of QuickSync. But hard to say, if they gonna ...

If asking me, what content you record, is the factor what bitrate you end up with. I always see when doing desktop recording, that Action! rarely detecting full 60 frames or even any, when very little happens on my screen. I today tried record my desktop and had about same low bitrate as your friend...

Must say, I haven't seen much info around either about optimizing Action!.
Right now I keep OS, Action! and all applications on my Samsung 830 SSD and for all recordings, I'm using my WD Black HDD. Seems working for me just fine.

Curiously downloading, I could easily get vegas to crash with your video, similar to what you describing.
Hope you get it solved. Some really weird issue you got there.

Have you tried disable your firewall?

Do you use latest version of Action!?

what about opening the videos on vlc? it always shows the "ficv" error No solution. VLC dont support 3rd filters like LAV filters and dont render FICV files. FFMPEG encoders has same problem because this my suggetions in above post. To play FICV files, MPC-HC or PotPlayer or KMPlayer are best. Clau...

Cool, thanks for sharing! I guess installing the popular k-lite codec pack will work too, as it contain LAV filters. I use that one and never faced importing issues.