Wow, is that right? Where is that in the help files? I'd like to read up on it a bit. Just exactly what do I do please? Thanks very much for your input. This will save me hours of waiting.

What Jimmy is referring to is Vegas smart-render feature.

Here is what I would do:

1. Open the project file.
2. Put a new video track on top, and in this place the rendered MPEG-2 file. You have to make sure its lined up exactly! Click the mute track button on and off and keep looking at the preview to see if they are lined up.
3. When you come to a spot that needs changing, trim out the middle of the MPEG-2 file, then make any changes on the tracks under that (on the original clips).
4. Make sure everything after the changes is still lined up correctly!
5. When you go to render, Vegas will only have to render out the parts that are changed. Everything else should say "no recompression required."

Hope that helps
kairosmatt

This reminds me of a workflow my brother uses that I could never figure out. According to him, he turns on some sort of pre-rendering or background rendering as he works on later parts of a project. Then he says when he's done, most of the project is already rendered. I can't for the life of me find any such feature. Closest I can see is "render to new track."

Anyone use such a workflow?

I have one instance rendering while I work in another, that's it.

"I have one instance rendering while I work in another, that's it."

Meaning that you have two Vegas apps going on -- one rendering, the other in which you are working on something else, yes?

kairosmatt,

Very nice, clear explanation. Thank you!

I think that to make smart rendering work for MPEG-2, you have to make sure to use the exact same average bitrate as you did for the initial render (although I am not 100% certain of this).