Ha! Well spotted Sherlock!

Yes, you're right, but having never had any response to such tickets from Sony I wondered if I was doing it wrong. I have always gone through the link Mike kindly provided but never yet had any reply (that I can recall - apologies to Sony if I've simply forgotten). The only joy I have had, contact-wise, is with telephone support but, let's be honest, this ain't gonna be resolved over the phone!

Update
 

I've been meaning to do this for a week or so now, but I have been up to my eyes in work.

As an experiment, and based on Wade's comment earlier in this thread, I turned off Autosave (from Excalibur), restarted Vegas, rendered a short project segment, then left the 'render complete' dialogue box open for ten minutes to see if the problem would manifest itself. I repeated this five times with the same project/render segment but I could not reproduce the problem.

I then turned Autosave back on with (I think) factory settings) and repeated the above process. On the very first render the problem occurred within a minute of the render completing.

Now, this is certainly NOT a scientific test and the problem is annoyingly random, so it could just be a coincidence (and Edward's comment earlier suggests it should not be the cause) , however I think it's something that should be considered and looked at more closely.

. . . and I'd like to point out that after 5 days I have still not had a response of any sort from Sony, which is disappointing.

Just to add something that may be relevant?

Attempted a render of a 5 minute program last night using Pro9a. I had successfully rendered this same program a coupkle of days ago to MPG2 and prepared a DVD. This time I was attempting to render as MPG4 for use on an iPOD. I set it to render (default) and walked away. Didn't return for two hours (I'm sure it only took a few minutes to actually render (i7 system). Found the progress bar at 100% but did not say Render complete and the only box available to activate was the cancel. Waited 15 more minutes with no change.. Then pushed cancel(?) which brought up a statement that render was canceled by user (duhh) and it stuck there. Tried to close Vegas but it was frozen tight. ONly way to close was ctrl-alt-del.
The only difference between the successful and unsuccessful render were that one was MPEG2 and one was Mpeg4 and for the successful one I was diligent and closed the render box within moments after it completed. Have not had time to try rerendering to MPEG4 again.

PS. VPro32 on Vista64 bit i7

When Vegas starts rendering, it sends out an "I'm Rendering" command that scripts can pick up. When that happens, I turn off autosave until I receive an "I'm Finished Rendering" command from Vegas. Now I'm wondering if Vegas sends out that command before displaying that dialog box and then hangs because it's trying to auto save while that dialog is still displayed????

Interesting thought. Anything I can do to aid further diagnosis? Just let me know, I'd be happy to help.

In fact, things are starting to add up:

This would perhaps explain why the problem is seemingly random - your script would not run if no changes had been made to the project, yes? So under those circumstances the problem would not occur - and I often render different formats from an otherwise unchanged veg.

Also, when I tried the test again with Autosave turned on, I changed the settings to save every 1 minute. Guess what - the problem occured within 1 minute.

And finally, I was rendering a file that had not been saved in the first place, thereby automatically kicking off an autosave instruction, I assume.

Looking like a strong candidate!

Yes, it definitely sounds like it is indirectly the cause. If the project does not need saving, it does NOT try to save. Perhaps a good temporary solution would be to make sure you do a file save before the file render. I will look into this, though.

Ed could you also look into the open copy in sound forge thing also... when I use auto save it won't release the sound forge file... I love your program though, it has saved my a$## a few times

Wade, I hadn't heard of that one.

Can both of you send me e-mails? It would be helpful for me if you did that.

Forgive my ignorance - did you mean both Wade and I? Is it just for the purpose of getting our email addresses to correspond re the issue (in which case it's ian@videoit.uk.com) or is there something specific you want me to put in the email?!?

Sorry, having a dumb moment!! Was up at 4am to take a friend to the airport.

I wanted e-mails on both issues just so I'd have a better way to remember when I get home. So please send me an e-mail about the lockup after render issue.

Ah, I see! Email duly sent.

I now have some good news to report on this issue. I believe we now have a fix. You can download Excalibur 6.0.6 from http://www.jetdv.com/excalibur which will give you the following changes:

Version 6.0.6

1. Updated Logo Resize so that images smaller than the video size are reset back to the original size and images larger than the video size are reset to be screen size.
2. Fixed an issue where AutoSave would try to save while the "Render Complete" dialog was still visible.
3. Fixed an issue where AutoSave would prevent Vegas from releasing media when not the active application.
4. Fixed an issue in Video Scrapbook where an empty event on the timeline would cause an error message.
5. Project Inspector will now detect looping events.

Edward,

Just to confirm that following your email I have tested the new version as much as time will allow this week and have come across no problems. Looks like all is now well.

Thanks for sorting this problem out.

Ian . . .