Curtis, thanks for that input.

I activated guest accounts on both computers and the first project I tried to render still fell over.

However, I then tried a second test project where I put all the media *directly* in to the shared folder (rather than in organised subdirectories off the shared folder, which I understood to be acceptable - see various posts at the Sony Vegas forum, including one from a Sony employee) and bingo, it worked.

So, it seems that all media has to be in the shared folder and may NOT be in sub-directories of that shared folder (or you have to map all those sub-directories).

While I am delighted to have finally got network rendering to work, this is a shame, as the projects I am working on contain many, many different types of media that I want to categorise and store in folders.

At the moment I create a unique media folder for each project, with a carefully planned directory structure. They are beautifully organised and I know where everything is. To have to dump it all in one folder would be counter-productive. To have to map many other folders would be a pain as I would need to change those mappings for all subsequent projects.

Perhaps something for Sony to consider for a future release?

That said, being able to network render is going to be very useful - I just have to change my work methods I guess.

One additional thought - maybe if I used 'copy and trim media with project' when saving the file that would do the trick. A shame to have to duplicate data but if it solves the problem . . . I shall experiment.

Thanks again to all who offered advice.

You may have a security problem Ian. Your last comment triggered
something that can be a real pain to resolve.

To access a folder/file over a share you need to have two rights
configured PROPERLY. The first is that the account your are using
(guest account for simple security in home????) to access the
share must have at least read access on this share. This is
something you can define with normal security under XP
Professional and I'm not sure how this would work under Home.
Perhaps it defaults it all to full control or something.

The second (and here usually the most problems occur) are the
rights to the folders and files THEMSELVES! Yes, they have rights
as well. This is only the case if you are having the files on an NTFS
parition by the way. On a FAT(32) volume you always have access
to all the files (basically).

What might be happening (probably since you copied the sub
directories/folders in there?) is that those subfolders have different
rights associated with them than the main folder does. In other
words, the account used to access that computer does not have
rights on the subfolder to access it.

This is common "issue" and can sometimes be very easy to forget.

Ofcourse it could also be that network rendering is not working
with sub folders as you say. I haven't had the time to test this
all out myself.

Very interesting, Rob - and possibly the most likely cause of my problem. It seems that people have had success with subfolders so I was surprised to experience otherwise.

I will also make a few more experiments and report back, however I don't think this will be for a while as I am off to New York on Monday and I suspect my wife and kids would like to see me leave my room for a change!

Ian . . .

By the way, I always sign on as Administrator as I am the only user of these PC's. I thought the guest account suggestion was worth a try though!