Hi Everybody,

Sorry, I was very distracted with my day job and dealing with the dance recital video in the evenings in which I hadn’t reviewed the replies.

My DVD burner setup is using a USB 2.0 connection in which SOFO doesn't support and V4 and DVDA also didn't recognize. I was hoping to find a solution here but I needed the burner to work yesterday, so… Funny thing is I have a Firewire to download my video but thought USB 2.0 was faster and would have more support (opps).

To solve my problem, I removed the external case (and of course voided my warranty) and plugged the DVD burner directly into the IDE bus. Everything has worked like a charm and I can burn close to a 2 hr DVD in about 15 minutes at 4x speed.

As an FYI (Batch Rendering is possible via JS):
Vegas 4.0
Only an example, I'm sure others forum members have a much better answer then this.
As an FYI, I also desperately wanted a batch rendering program (I haven’t had a chance to look at SOFO’s) to take my 32+ dances and render into Video for Windows and then into MPEG-2 and AC-3. This would have been about 100 renders if it went perfectly and that’s Friday night. I’d have to do it again for Saturday…

I found out that you can script in the .NET framework (JS) and after playing for a weekend I have it working (I have a programming background but haven’t worked with the new framework).

Here is the very primitive program (some stolen from SOFO examples). Sorry I haven’t commented almost anything and this isn’t plug_and_play so you’ll need a slight background in programming to really use it.

/**
* This script can be used to queue up multiple Vegas project files
* to be rendered.
*
* Revision Date: May. 07, 2003
**/

import System;
import System.IO;
import System.Windows.Forms;
import SonicFoundry.Vegas;

// Set this to a valid out directory or set it to null if you want the
// output files to be created in the same directory as their project
// file.

var defaultOutputDir = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Nomaders\\My Documents\\Fitzpatrick Dancers\\2003\\Output\\Sat";
var defaultInputDir = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Nomaders\\My Documents\\Fitzpatrick Dancers\\2003\\Input\\Sat";

// Set the following variable to true if you want to allow the script
// to overrwite existing rendered output files.
var allowFileOverwrites = true;

var renderer : Renderer;
var renderTemplate :RenderTemplate;

try {
if ((null != defaultOutputDir) && !Directory.Exists(defaultOutputDir))
throw "output directory does not exist: " + defaultOutputDir;

// Create a reference to the current directory.
var di : DirectoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(defaultInputDir);

// Create an array representing the files in the current directory.
var renderQueue : FileInfo[] = di.GetFiles("Sat*.veg");

// Print out the names of the files in the current directory.
var queueIndex = 0
for (var i : int in renderQueue) {
// MessageBox.Show(renderQueue[i]);
queueIndex++;
}

// Sort the queue
renderQueue.sort();


// for each project file in the queue...
var renderIndex = 0
while (renderIndex < queueIndex) {

// open the next project
var vegFilename = renderQueue[renderIndex];
if (!Vegas.OpenProject(vegFilename)) {
throw "failed to open project file: " + vegFilename;
}

// compute the output directory
var outputDir;
if (null == defaultOutputDir) {
outputDir = Path.GetDirectoryName(vegFilename);
} else {
outputDir = defaultOutputDir;
}

// ************** Video for Windows and NTSC DV *************

// Modify the following two lines to suit you needs for the output format.
var rendererRE = /Video for Windows/;
var templateRE = /NTSC DV/;

// find the renderer and template
renderer = FindRenderer(rendererRE);
if (null == renderer)
throw "failed to find renderer";
renderTemplate = FindRenderTemplate(renderer, templateRE);
if (null == renderTemplate)
throw "failed to find render template";

// get file name extension that will be appended to each output file
var rendererExt = renderer.FileExtension.substring(1);

// create the output file name
var outputName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(vegFilename);
var outputFilename = outputDir + Path.DirectorySeparatorChar + outputName + rendererExt;
if ((!allowFileOverwrites) && File.Exists(outputFilename))
throw "file already exists: " + outputFilename;

// perform the render
var renderStatus = Vegas.Render(outputFilename, renderTemplate);
if (RenderStatus.Complete != renderStatus)
throw "failed to complete render: " + outputFilename;



renderIndex++;
}
} catch (e) {
MessageBox.Show(e);
}


function FindRenderer(rendererRegExp : RegExp) : Renderer {
var rendererEnum : Enumerator = new Enumerator(Vegas.Renderers);
while (!rendererEnum.atEnd()) {
var renderer : Renderer = Renderer(rendererEnum.item());
if (null != renderer.FileTypeName.match(rendererRegExp)) {
return renderer;
}
rendererEnum.moveNext();
}
return null;
}

function FindRenderTemplate(renderer : Renderer, templateRegExp : RegExp) : RenderTemplate {
var templateEnum : Enumerator = new Enumerator(renderer.Templates);
while (!templateEnum.atEnd()) {
var renderTemplate : RenderTemplate = RenderTemplate(templateEnum.item());
if (renderTemplate.Name.match(templateRegExp)) {
return renderTemplate;
}
templateEnum.moveNext();
}
return null;
}

Thanks everybody, Regards,
Nomaders