Thank you for your response. Unfortunately for me I don't speak whatever language  your reply came through in, but I did recognize the word archive.  and this page does  look like the page is I saw and the help documents for Vegas Pro 18.

My question wasn't how to Archive, as that is fairly obvious with the tools involved. my question was the difference between archiving a session  versus exporting a session. They seemed to offer a similar result, and I would like to understand the differences or similarities in order to take advantage of their individual features respectively for my current and Future activities with Vegas Pro. But thanks for your input.

Could someone who has installed an English version please help our friend out with the English help text or an appropriate answer?

@GARY-MURWAY
I only have the German version installed - it was just to show, that the help text in Vegas Pro has a corresponding explanation.

Search "Archiving projects" in online Help.

Search "Export" in online Help to see how that term is used in VEGAS nomenclature, e.g. item "Importing and exporting projects".

Thanks for the pointer Walter. I have done extensive searches with Google but I will try some other search engines today although I don't expect much of a different response, and the word export returns tidal waves of information on how to render and best rendering for YouTubers etc.

And Google searches of archive for Vegas Pro weren't very helpful either.

I've got a project that totals approximately a half a terabyte and it's broken up into dozens subsections. it took the better part of a year to edit this thing so I would like to maintain it intact if I could as I've had so many of those experiences where I lose the dynamic link between files and  their respective sessions.

This particular project was a very unusual production and offered some very eclectic challenges for me and since it was put together in such an unorthodox way in terms of filmmaking/ video capture, many of my questions and queries must seem like they're off the wall or coming in from Left Field. Apologies in advance but I'm not sure I'm even on the right forum thread for this. I'll keep looking around thank you for your help.

Search "Archiving projects" in online Help.

Search "Export" in online Help to see how that term is used in VEGAS nomenclature, e.g. item "Importing and exporting projects".

thanks again Walter. I do see where the help documentation explains how to do exporting and how to do archiving but I don't find any explanation of the differences between the two. there seem to be some nuances that there are differences but no detailed explanation.

both functions seem to export the same data and both functions seem to be suitable for archiving so I'm a tad confused as to which one to use.

@GARY-MURWAY From the Help file, simply put, Archive saves the VP project file along with selected other files.
Export saves the project in a form that can be imported by other, specific, NLEs.

Hey Jack you got me a lot closer to it, I really appreciate it. First of all I just noticed I have been exhibiting a lifelike billboard Style example stupid and lack of cognitive reading!

No I'm not being too hard on myself Stay With Me pls.

your post pointed out to me that the question I should have been asking is what's the difference between archiving and “save as”. My bad huge  humble apologies from me.

When I read your post  I suddenly recognized that I've been asking the question incorrectly. There's a fellow who's got a 3-minute video for preparing Vegas sessions to be given to someone else.

So after reading  the couple of replies to my post I went back and looked at the video again and recognize that the guy is using Sony Vegas from 4 years ago and that may have been the way to save/archive sessions back then.

The thing that intrigued me was when he clicked on some kind of a little lightning bolt thingy on the top left of the screen it discarded all the junk from his session. wasn't going to be archiving or saving in his case extra data he didn't need.

In Vegas Pro 18 I don't see that little lightning bolt anywhere and I've not been able to find any alternative venues that might house at yet, or maybe just doesn't exist anymore. the objective of my whole Adventure here was to be able to archive or save whatever word works best huge sessions for later use in Vegas so that I can move them off my drive and next year bring them back for more editing without losing the links between the event data and the session.

My personal experience has been when I move completed sessions off my work drive, even though I have the clips and all the session work in the same folder as the session,  just becomes disassociated and or lost. So I'm hoping archive or 'save as'  might be a solution for this. Any words of wisdom?

@GARY-MURWAY basically, read @3POINT here.

The thing that intrigued me was when he clicked on some kind of a little lightning bolt thingy on the top left of the screen it discarded all the junk from his session. wasn't going to be archiving or saving in his case extra data he didn't need.

In Vegas Pro 18 I don't see that little lightning bolt anywhere and I've not been able to find any alternative

For the function "remove all unused media" only the icon has changed:

My way of archiving projects looks like this:
For the project, I pack all the files I need for the project into a superordinate folder - in this case: "Annapurnarunde 2016".
When the project is finished, the unused media are removed from the individual *.veg files, and the whole folder structure including media is moved to two (data security) archive hard drives.
Done.
I don't shorten the media files, as shown in your linked video, because I save my footage at the same time.

Example folder structure for the project:

nice approach walter thx. my next feat is to cut down on all the redundant/duplicate file i produce because i have a sloppy work flow. i need to pay more attention to house keeping.

my next feat is to cut down on all the redundant/duplicate file i produce because i have a sloppy work flow. i need to pay more attention to house keeping.

You are not alone........😂

Sometimes, however, duplicate files make sense.
For example, I copy the music I use from my "music hard drive" into the project folder and thus archive it twice or even several times if I use a piece of music in several projects.
Linking would be too unsafe for me if, for example, I change the sorting on the "music hard disk". 

I'm absolutely with you on that one Walter that would be too dangerous relying on one file to feed multiple sessions around different drives. I do very much the same thing in terms of duplicate files. however when I'm editing one of these 3-hour presentations that took place in 3 hour time slots over six performances, gives me six three-hour tracks of video and audio that I have to bounce in and out of the grab the best pieces of each performance to create one performance at the other end. not an unusual task if you're dealing in five and 10 minute clips, when you're editing a stage play that long... and I haven't mentioned the audio stems yet I can have as many as 12 actors laved up on the stage all recording to their own audio track to be mixed in later. so in addition to all of the scratch tracks that are attached to the video tracks I got 12 other clean audio tracks that have to be cut and synced up to their respective position in the performance... then add the music when it's a musical and it then it gets really fun! it's really not bad it's pretty straight ahead.😎

why 3 hours long? long boring story but here's a thumbnail sketch.

[I just read over my thumbnail sketch. it's more like a footprint from Sasquatch. I may have overdone it I hope not]

the venue I'm shooting in is it small 200 seat thrust stage theater. I had to fly three camcorders from the lighting grid to capture these performances. there's absolutely no room for camera operators and if they were they'd be right on top of the audience and talking in their com gear would be unpleasant for the meat in the seat. I chose camcorders because dslrs and such have run time issues and won't run for 3 hours consecutively like a camcorder will. so I picked up some Canon vixia hfg 60s they do a good job for me. the downside is everything has to be set on auto so you can imagine some of the things that have to be overcome and why so many performances have to be mashed up into one to get one good one for video. I should say they're all good on the stage but I'm talking about the capture strategy here.

the director also wants the cameras running from the time the doors open to the time the people leave. they want the intermission captured and anything that goes on in front of the cameras in the theater during intermission. so when I get to the venue I get to walk in front of three cameras with a remote turn them on and before I leave I get to walk in front of three cameras with remote turn them off and collect the data and yada yada yada.

it's a pretty unique and fun gig.

anyway, Walter one of the reasons I put all that potentially creepy description of when I'm working on in this post is, when I was looking for information on capturing live stage performances I came up with a huge zero! I couldn't find anything on that technique and dealing with the foibles involved. so I've been figuring in that as I go along and obviously this past year and 2020 we didn't do anything but prior to that I've developed some solutions and workarounds. and if someone out there runs into a similar problem and does a search and find this on this thread it'll be there first confirmation that they're not alone.

hopefully, more people involved in offbeat projects like this might chime in and share their workarounds. I believe that might even be helpful for regular filmmakers but they come up with all kinds of great hacks so there might be something on this end that can add to their hack bucket.

I've taken up enough of your day Walter thanks so much for listening and thanks for all the great information. have a wonderful day and I'm sure we'll exchange again soon.

Thank you for the detailed description of your workflow - I find it very interesting.

At the same time, I hope I don't get into the situation of having to film something like that. The amount of data is really huge and, in my opinion, requires a precise, well thought-out and intelligent workflow so that it doesn't become unmanageable. Archiving is certainly only one of the important points.
Furthermore, I'm afraid that your work is voluntary and therefore doesn't really bring in much money. Am I guessing right?

I remember that - especially in the early days of Corona - there were some threads about film recordings of holy masses and there have also been threads about film recordings of theatre performances.
I therefore hope for your sake that someone will get in touch with you about your particular problem and can talk shop with you on this subject.
You might also find something if you try the search function here in the forum.  

Unfortunately, I can't contribute anything myself - my travel videos, which I mainly create, are also 1 to 2 hours long (in several chapters) but only with one camera and mainly filmed by hand.  
Good luck
Walter

Walter you are a breath of fresh air. Your comment about precise, well thought-out and intelligent workflow is vindicating to say the least. It is one of my biggest challenges since I come from audio world for about the past 50 years, visual editing documentation wasn't on my radar till the 1990s when I went digital. i wasn't Interested in carrying giant bars of light bulbs and 8 millimeter cameras around to Capture Moments. Anyway your comment answers a lot of questions for me because I feel I don't know the questions to ask or what the ramifications of doing it incorrectly are. except I seem to lose a lot of stuff.

Your suggestion about the search feature in the Forum sounds good I'll give that a shot as well as your idea about churches. Never thought of that one I have look for theater stuff and you're right it's very thin out there for that information.

I thank you for all your help and inspiration in this little journey of mine on going...

If I could just clearly understand the difference between Vegas Pro 18 file save vs Vegas archive. I've looked at responses and explanations and I'm not clear on which one I should be using or even what the differences are you seem to be a different way to do the same thing.

Thanks for all your help and additional ideas on this.

I forgot to mention, this is an income producing venture. I got the gig through my experience and audio and then ended up with the video because apparently nobody else wanted to do it. the local video / film/ Indy filmmaker types just said no thank you we don't do that. but there are people that do just got to have to find them.

@GARY-MURWAY I've looked at responses and explanations and I'm not clear on which one I should be using or even what the differences are you seem to be a different way to do the same thing.

I'm confused as to why you're confused. The choice is simple as far as I can see. Condensed from the Help file :-

Archive - Use this to save your Vegas Pro project, along with its assets. You can choose which assets you include in the archive. This archive can then be loaded into Vegas Pro at a later date if necessary.

Export - Use this to port your Vegas Pro project, along with its assets to another NLE, such as Premier, DaVinci Resolve, etc. You choose which NLE the project is to be ported to when you export it.

In short, use Archive to save your project in Vegas Pro format. Otherwise, use Export.

Thank you for your response Jack.

perhaps my post wasn't clear but the issue or the question is NOT the difference between archiving Vegas or exporting Vegas which both seem to occur under the same drop down file.

and which I humbly apologize for inadvertently misrepresenting or not explaining clearly in the earlier parts of my post I was still a little confused about the language myself at that point. but I think I might have massaged it a little bit as it moved on to get the meaning of my questions out there articulated a tad more clearly.

 Below is the link that kind of started this conversation. my question was actually the “difference between archiving Vegas and saving it” like this guy does in the video to give it to another vegas user.

I'm wondering if there is a difference in the amount or quality of data I can capture with one technique versus the other. Do you have any experience with what this fellow is talking about?

@GARY-MURWAY Right, now I understand. Basically, the way described in the video is how I archive my projects (I don't ZIP them though). Fundamentally the method used is the same in VP18. However, when he talks about clicking the lightning bolt to remove unused media, VP18 doesn't have the lightning bolt. How you do it now is to click the 'Remove All Unused Media From Project' icon as shown below OR, select 'Tools/Clean Project Media'. This will make sure that the only media saved is that which is on the timeline.

Another point. When he selects 'Create trimmed copies of source media' in the 'Copy Media Options' dialog, it's best not to do this. It takes a very long time with a large project and it can also have an impact on the quality of your source media. It's best to leave it at the default option of 'Copy source media'.

I haven't tried the 'Archive' function, but I think I'll give it a try. It sounds basically the same as the 'Save As ...' method described in the video, but with more options to determine exactly what you want to archive.