Umm...forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is ripple edit? When it is turned on, what does it do?

If its on, when you drag a clip onto the timeline, the clips to the right move over to make room for it. Conversely, when you delete a clip, the clips on the right slide to the left to take up the space the deleted clip occupied.
You can use the dropdown on the ripple edit button to determine whether all events on a track, or all events on all tracks, react to the edit.

Ripple is not just for inserting or removing clips - I hardly ever use it for that - but more commonly you may decide you want an event to be maybe a second or so shorter, or longer.

Drag the end of the clip to it's new length. A grey arrow at the top of the timeline tells you Vegas has noted EXACTLY how much you have changed things. Now if you use Ctrl - Shift - F, everything to the right will move by that amount, restoring your project to its former glory.

Two things to add -

* the above happens when you set ripple to "All Tracks, Markers & Regions". You can also set it to Affected Tracks only or Affected Tracks, Bus Tracks, Markers and Regions.

* Watch out if you have any Events locked - they will not move with everything else. This is why I wish Locked Tracks were shown more clearly (?Red outline?) as it's easy to miss the present mild shading, especially with a large project.

I use post edit ripple in every project. I have one question though. In the "Edit" dropdown box the "Post Edit Ripple" selections are grayed out all the time, however I can start it from the keyboard. What is the trouble here?

Thanks, all

donp326,

I think you'll find they spring into life from being greyed out whenever you move insert or remove something, in other words when the ripple can actually be activated.

I always use Ctrl Shift F so I've never checked this out before!

peter