ok... so does that just render it out as a lossless format in an AVI container and then when you suck it into Vegas you still won't be able to edit the timeline but can re-render it out as something else?

Just making sure I follow you. thx, -mgm

Yes on the AVI part, as far as I know. And when you import it as media into Vegas as an AVI file, the timeline (which has been maintained) will simply become the Vegas timeline. You'll be able to work with it just as you would with any other type of media--edit, apply effects, render, whatever.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are asking and I am certainly no expert with Vegas yet, but I think you'll be fine.

TB

EDIT: On the lossless compression bit--I did a little research, and it appears that AVI isn't *exactly* lossless; it does have some loss due to the compression it employs. But I don't think it's significant, from what I have read.

AVI is a container format, it can contain uncompressed or comressed, lossless or lossy formats, depending on the codecs used for the A and V that get Interleaved.

Mark, as others have said, AVI is not necessarily uncompressed.
You didn't say what format you were working with in Movie Maker but, assuming it was from a camcorder and captured as DV-AVI, rendering it out in this same format will result in the lowest quality loss.
What you'll end up with in Vegas is the entire timeline as one continuous clip that you can further edit as desired.
Keep in mind that any FX you did to the source footage will be rendered as well and this is where the quality loss will show up.
The DV-AVI coded in Movie Maker is not as good as the one in Vegas but, without having to resort to recapturing everything, it's one of the best options you have.
The other option is to load all the clips (if you still have them) into Vegas and start editing all over again.
The decision is yours.

edit: Yes, once it's in Vegas, you can render it out to any of the formats Vegas supports.

Mike

Well when i was using Movie Making I was just sucking 640x480 MPG off a Sony digital camera (still photo camera with video capture option).

I see what you guys are saying and it makes the most logical sense. My problem now is that since I created those Movie Maker timelines I have rebuilt a Vista x64 machine and my media file locations have changed. Movie Maker just does NOTHING when I try to "browse for missing media" since the logical disk location has changed.

So I'm not even able to open the old MM timelines in MM x64 and get the media locations sorted out. If I figure that out I can do what you suggest and then bring things into Vegas and work on them in a real NLE tool.

Thanks for the input. This helps.

-mgm

MMOODY said:
My problem now is that since I created those Movie Maker timelines I have rebuilt a Vista x64 machine and my media file locations have changed. Movie Maker just does NOTHING when I try to "browse for missing media" since the logical disk location has changed.

That's not so difficult to resolve, even if MM isn't able to repath as Sony Vegas is.

If the MM project expects the files to be in say, D:\old\path\to\mpegs\ and you currently have them in E:\New\Path\ simply map drive D: to E:, then move or copy files from E:\New\Path to E:\old\path\to\mpegs and MM should find everything where it expects.

I don't really use MM, so there may be a different way to do this, but this will make it believe the files are still where they once were.