Scott - thanks a bunch for your answer. I am so new at this, I'm trying really hard to understand what you are saying.

When I capture the video using firewire from my dv cam, it is not capturing as .avi, it creates a different file (can't remember the extension). That is why I was rendering to .avi to be able to view and create menu's in DVDA. I really don't know what it is better to render as. I tryed rendering as .mpeg2 last night and had no success at all. It took an hour to render my 2 hour video and when I pull it into DVDA, it only shows me like 2 seconds of my video. I don't get it.

So once I am done editing in Vegas 5, you are saying I should render as mpeg2. Correct? Do I need to highlight my entire video before pressing render as? Why is it not rendering the entire video.

Thanks.

Also, can you explain this to me?

What file system are you using? If it's not NTFS then you should convert your disk over to NTFS

file system and convert my disk for some reason is not triggering my tech knowledge.

Is this all within Vegas 5 or are you referring to my computer disk? I'm lost.

Thanks. - sorry, I'm sure in a few weeks of learning, I'll get all of this stuff down.

First of all, what are you using to capture? The capture file should be a DV AVI file.

My suggestion would be to start with something smaller to get a feel for the workflow.

Depending on what type of processor you have (speed), disk configuration, etc., yes, it can take a long time to render to MPEG-2, but whether you do it in Vegas or in DVDA you can't escape the process (DVDA just hides it from you). Other things can also cause slow renders such as pan/crop, opacity (be sure you didn't accidentally change the track opacity), etc.

You should not need to highlight the entire video track in order to render - however, be sure that you don't have the "render loop region only" box checked on the render screen - if it is checked, then that's all you'll get is the loop region.

Not intending to step on ScottW, if he's still around and responding, but here are some answers in the interim:

NTFS is a disk drive file system which overcomes file size limitations that exist in FAT and FAT32 systems. If you open the Windows Explorer and right click on a disc drive letter, then select "Properties" from the popup, you'll see the file system in use displayed on the "General" tab.

It's generally recommended to use NTFS for video work where file sizes can easily reach 20gigs or more. If you find that you're not currently using NTFS, the disk can be easily converted by Windows, as Scott suggested.

NTFS is the prefered file system to be running with Windows, especially for video editing. FAT32 is another file system available with windows and it has a limit that files cannot exceed 4GB in size. This is likely why your file is getting broken up - if you look at the actual file sizes, you'll probably find that they are just slightly under 4GB.

While it's just a simple command to convert from FAT32 to NTFS you might want to consider something like PartitionMagic to make the job even easier (since there are a couple of potential pitfalls). Or, if you aren't very computer literate, take your machine to a pro and have them do the conversion.

--Scott

Okay, I will look again when capturing the video and what settings it's on.

I just bought a new Dell 8400 desktop with 1gb ram, 2.6 ghz, I was hoping this was speedy enough for video editing. I am rendering to a separate external Lacie hard drive which may be some of the cause.

I do not have render loop region only clicked. I did to some cropping, but mostly just added some transitions and general media clips.

So, I'll try again tonight.

Thanks again for your help.

Thanks so much. I'm going to go home and check on it first thing this afternoon.

That will be my first step at fixing my computer configuration for video editing.

I new I'd find some answers on this forum.

Help appreciated.

Andry

Thanks Scott. I figured it would be an easy switch from a drop down menu of some sort. But since you are mentioning pitfalls, I may consider using the software you recommended. Thanks for that info. Greatly appreciated.

Andry

google using the string "convert fat32 to ntfs"

The major pitfall is that you could end up with a cluster size of 512, which again isn't very good for video editing but not the end of the world either.