thanks for the link. Sorry, I had tried searching for copy inhibit but my search was not broad enough. I also found a way to resolve it , even though your link was a far better way to remedy the situation. I tried lots of things , re-rendering, opened it in Video Factory and rendered through there, finally cut a small section and then rendered again and bingo , for some reason the print to tape was completed.

I have no idea why this happened but thought i'd post how it was resolved in case anyone else gets the same situation. Have done several short films before but never had this problem.

For what its worth,

I think I've had the false "copy inhibit" error twice. I can't remember what caused the first one, but the second one I traced to a bad capture. For a split second, the audio track had a weird spike of noise. Whenever I tried to print that section to tape, I'd get the error. Once I trimmed that frame away, no problem.

This was a standard DV file, captured from my Sony Digital 8 camcorder through Scenalyzer, and printed out with Vegas.

It definitely threw me for a loop until I zoomed in on that spot and saw that noise spike.

Greg