Right now I'm just finishing up a major project, and I have three instances of Vegas running in the background at idle priority so they don't interfere with whatever I'm doing in the foreground. To get Vegas to idle priority, you can always start the program, and then use CTRL-ALT-DEL to pull up Windows Task Manager, select the processes tab, right-click on the vegas thread, and select the appropriate priority. It's a bit of a pain, however.

Instead, one can start Vegas with the idle priority already selected. I know very little about batch files, but ran across this one recently.

Here's what you do:

(1) Create a text file on your desktop.

(2) Type in this string (without the quotes):

"cmd /c start /low vegas40.exe"

Note the spaces. Also, you need to use the actual name of the Vegas executable file. I'm running Vegas 4, so the name of the executable is "Vegas40.exe". Vegas 5 is called "Vegas50.exe".

(3) Save the text file as something catchy, such as "Vegas idle priority" and change the suffix from .txt to .bat .

(4) Put the bat file you just created in the same folder that holds the Vegas.exe file (probably C:\Program files\Sony\Vegas 5.0).

(5) Right-click the bat file and drag to your desktop and make a shortcut to the bat file.

That's it. If you click the shortcut, an instance of Vegas will open with idle priority already selected.