Q: What is the difference between Save As and Render As in Sony Vegas?
Answer: These are two separate functions and are often misunderstood by beginners learning Sony Movie Studio Platinum or Sony Vegas Pro.
Save As
When you are working on any Vegas or Movie Studio project and wish to SAVE your project, go to Project – Save As. This saves a .vf project file that contains all the data for your project – it does not contain any video files. It is a very, very small file. This is your master file and can be re-opened and added to as many times as you like.
You should always press Save As regularly to reduce the chances of loosing your work if you experience a crash.
Render As
A totally different function is when you press Make Movie or Render As (same thing). This makes a new video from your project.
Pressing Render As or Make Movie does NOT save your project – it is only making a video. A video is a video – nothing else.
If you want to Import more Media into an existing project, you must first re-open the small .vf project file by going to Project - Open. Then once you're happy with any additions, you then have to Render As again to make a brand new video.