If the newly rendered .avi file is only 14MB then something went wrong when you rendered. 14MB is only about 3.5 seconds worth of video, not 20 minutes. 20 minutes would be a little over 4GB.

When you did the render, was there a checkmark in the box labeled "Render loop selection only"? If so then only the selected part of the timeline would be rendered. Make sure you uncheck this box to render the whole project.

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Rendering an output .avi (or other types like .mpg, .wmv, .rm, etc.) movie file and saving a .veg project file are always two separate operations. Neither operation automatically does the other for you. You must manually do both when you want them to happen.

You should be saving the project as a .veg file every few minutes for safe keeping. Every time you finish editing a section of video you should save. Also i suggest that when you save you add a new number to the file name. For example, after you finish cutting the opening scene save as somthing like "diving_trip_001.veg". Then after you cut the next scene save as "diving_trip_002.veg", and so on. That way if you find out you've messed things up you can always go back to the previous save and restart from there.

Saving a .veg file merely stores the steps you have done in Vegas so far. It doesn't save any video. You save a .veg file so that if your computer crashes or you decide to shut it down or exit Vegas, you can open up the .veg file later and be right back where you left it, all the clips still trimmed and arranged just as they were when you saved.

Rendering a video file creates new media files. Normally this is done only when you're finished editing, or at least finished some major section of it and you want to see how the finished output will look.

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Now, in your case, you're not really creating your finished video yet. You're merely trimming scenes to cut out unwanted material. Presumably you're planning on doing the finished editing later. So, assuming that's the way you want to work ...

Do realize that if you continue this way you'll end up with a single file containing all of the trimmed original clips as one long single scene. There's nothing technicaly wrong with this. However, whereas before you can easily locate each scene/clip as a separate event on the timeline, now you'll have just one long event and it may be difficult and time consuming to find the scene breaks for further editing. You may find that this isn't as helpful as you want it to be.

Here are some suggestions:

1) Instead of rendering all of the trimmed scenes to one single file, select each trimmed event (double-click on it) and then [b]DO[\b] check the "render loop selection only" option to render just that trimmed clip to a new file. Repeat for each event on the timeline choosing a new filename each time. You'll then end up with each trimmed clip as a separate file which will make it easy to find the scenes and arrange them.

2) Don't bother saving the trimmed versions at all; just keep working with the original clips. Instead of just rough-cutting in your current project and saving new trimmed versions, do the finished editing right in your current project. It won't matter a hill of beans to your workflow if the 10 second event on the timeline refers to a 10 second .avi file on the hard drive or if it only refers to 10 seconds out of the middle of a 45 second file. There really is no need to save trimmed versions of the clips except to clear up hard drive space.

And, to be a bit blunt, 18GB is not much space. It's really just a drop in the bucket compared to modern hard drive sizes. I just added a 500GB drive to my editing computer for about $118. I now have 960GB available. I wouldn't even flinch at keeping 180GB of project files lying around until the project is finished.

The other reason to keep working with all the original files is that if you do make tirmmed versions and delete the originals, you may find that eventually you'll wish to use some material you've deleted. If that happens you'll have to go back and find that scene on the tape and recapture it. On the other hand if you keep the working with the original files then that scene is still on your hard drive, easily accessible with a few mouse clicks.

3) Just a personal suggestion .... it does seem to some of us that you're not really getting our answers. We see you asking the same questions over and over again a lot. You've been getting very good answers from lots of people here, but it looks like in lots of cases you're not even trying what folks are suggesting. It's almost as if when answer doesn't immediately make sense to you, you don't even try it to see what will happen. Please spend some more time playing with Vegas. I think you'll find with just a few more minutes of experimenting each time you get an answer in here that they really do help and make sense.

We do enjoy helping people with answers to their questions. But even more than that we enjoy seeing people learn and succeed with their editing projects. So, please try a bit harder to put what we've told you into action. I think you'll find that with a bit more careful work many of the questions you've asked would have become obvious to you on your own.