The impact of the time at high temperature annealing on the morphology, crystal structure and emission in visible spectral range has been studied in Si rich HfO$_2$:Nd films produced by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering in pure argon plasma. The annealing was carried out at 900 °C for 1, 5, 10, 30 and 60 min in the nitrogen atmosphere. A set of experimental methods have been used, such as: scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and photoluminescence (PL). In the present work the joint analysis of PL and XRD results permits us to estimate the optimal time parameters of annealing at 900 °C the Si-HfO$_2$: Nd films for obtaining the bright emission via 4f electronic levels of the Nd ions embedded in the tetragonal HfO$_2$ phase mainly after long annealing (30- 60 min). The film oxidation for annealing times (60 min) stimulated some crystal phase transformation with the start of formation of the tetragonal SiO$_2$ phase, that is accompanied by the defect generation and decreasing the PL intensity. The discussion of PL and XRD results is presented in detail.