Hi, no I didn't mean that. say I have two projects ONE.veg and TWO.veg
If I have ONE.veg open and I double click on TWO.veg in the explorer I want ONE.veg to close down and TWO.veg to open... with the standard and appropriate 'do you want to save ONE.veg?' type dialogs.

Sorry but Vegas doesn't work that way.
What you need to do is open (File - Open) TWO.veg.
If you've made any changes to ONE.veg, you'll get the prompt.
BTW, do this once and both vegs will be in the history list so you won't have to browse for them.

Mike

Ok. That's a shame as it does preclude Vegas from being used with external media library software in certain ways. I.e the Basehead sound library software, using Vegas as the default Wave editor to insert sound files into the current Vegas session via Basehead. It means that Vegas spawns a new instance everytime instead of just opening the soundfile in the current project.

This instance behaviour should be an option in Vegas. I also generally find having multiple instances of Vegas open in my taskbar instead of a proper multi-document implementation annoying.

i just do "file - open".

Not that many things support multiple document interfaces. It'd be very hard to do with a NLE, it interacts with lots of hardware which is configured by the "document".

Bob.

Interesting question. Windows pretty much does this by default. When writing a program, you have to add code to prevent this behavior. In doing a brief search to find a solution, I thought perhaps you might be able to add a policy (if you have XP Pro), but couldn't find a way to do it.

The only thing I have come up with would be to use some sort of batch "launcher" program and have it manage instances. Don't have time to search for such a thing.

Can't you just click on the "X" in the upper right-hand corner of Vegas and THEN double-click on "two.veg"???

If you don't want the first one open, close it first!

Personally, I just right-click it in the Vegas Explorer window and choose "Open Project"

I think the issue here is that a file is being opened by a 3rd party application which merely calls whatever program is registered to open that file type. That means that the only thing that happens is a system level "open" call to the target application. There's no way for the 3rd party application to tell Vegas how to open it, or to close other files first.

That sounds about right. You can drag and drop a file onto the Vegas icon or even a project file and all works correctly. Or you can do it from the command line.
Problem is he wants to add more files to the already open instance of Vegas.
Say go through a database of music and the database app adds the files to the Vegas project as you select them. This will not work.

However you could build a Vegas project or EDL from a database and once complete have Vegas open that.

Bob.

In programming, you check using some sort of call (I don't do much programming but it is a "getwin-somethingorother" type call). What I was trying to suggest earlier is that it might be possible for some sort of batch execution utility to do this for you. I suspect that if you look at some of the batch utilities at places like shareware.com that they might be able to query if the program was open and if so, to close it first, like jetdv was suggesting doing manually.

Your calling app would then call the batch program, instead of Vegas, and the batch program would close Vegas, if needed, and then open Vegas and feed the VEG to Vegas.

OK, here's a program that will probably do what you want. Haven't used it myself, but I'm pretty sure it will do the trick:

Robotask

you can download the PDF here:

Robotask User Manual

It is a 200 page manual !!

Here's the key information that leads me to believe you could cause Vegas to be first shut down, if already running, so that multiple instances could be avoided:

Process.

I believe this behavior changed when Vegas introduced nested vegs.
You can no longer drag a veg to an open window without nested it either.

The quickest option is still File > Open.
If you close the original instance of Vegas, then you have to wait until Vegas initializes and loads.

if the problem is you don't want to have to rebrowse to the file, I think the easiest way is to have windows show the entire path in the folder window. Then copy it from there and choose File > Open in Vegas and paste in the path.

You can no longer drag a veg to an open window without nested it either.

If you drag it to the title bar, it will open the VEG, just like File -> Open. If you instead place it on the timeline, it will nest it.

i still don't get what's so hard about CTRL+O or file - open. seems like a lot of extra work around to save a few seconds of time. Especially when projects can take minutes to open and if you tried to open multiple files in one instance the system could be stuck for hours loading up project after project.

Maybe oppening with a double-click in the Vegas file explorer would do the trick?

Maybe opening with a double-click in the Vegas file explorer would do the trick? BINGO!!

You get the prize. That's a great solution. Didn't know Vegas worked that way.

Someone explain how any of this comes close to achieving what the OP wants:

using Vegas as the default Wave editor to insert sound files into the current Vegas session via Basehead

By this I assume he means have Vegas open or else it gets opened once and then from Basehead he selects a file and it's added into the T/L in the open Vegas instance.

Bob.

Bob said "Not that many things support multiple document interfaces."

Hmm. Vegas is the only NLE i've seen that doesn't do that.

Well, okay, I see a difference. Media100 would open multiple timelines but they'd be managed as part of the one project. I think they were discrete file objects, though. PPro also opens multiple timelines but I think those are inside the project file. AEFX too, I think.

That's not quite the same as having multiple separate files that all open in tabs in the same instance of Vegas. For that I'd look at Flash as an example. You can make a flash project file which is a loose collection of FLA files. They all open at once if you open the project FLP and they all can share the same output options when opened this way.

I don't expect to double-click a media file and have it open in Vegas, in fact I wouldn't want that at all. Doubleclicking a Veg file does open a new instance of Vegas and if I want to open the Veg in an existing instance I drag the veg to that instance's title bar and drop it. It's easy and gets monobass the result he's looking for.

I have to admit that I almost always drag and drop to open things in Vegas, or I open a recent project from Vegas, file menu. Life's too short to try to navigate a file system from a "File-Open" dialog.

Rob Mack

Isn't he describing two different things? Opening Veg1 then Veg2, and having Vegas act as a default WAV editor?

Rob

AutoHotKey should do what you want. http://www.autohotkey.com/

It's a macro program that runs scripts for almost complete control of windows.

Look at the Open/OpenWait and Winxxx commands.

Andrew

One of my favorite features in Vegas is the ability to open multiple instances or so multiple projects in one timeline.

If you only want one instance open the solution is pretty simple.

Close Vegas and open the other project. Since Vegas was just loaded it'll be in memory and lead really quickly.

It's even quicker to just drag the new veg onto the titlebar. You drop it on the titlebar to open the Veg, if you drop it within the program area Vegas adds it to the current project. When you do it this way Vegas asks you if you want to save the current project. You save it, it closes, the new one opens. Couldn't be simpler.

Since monobass was already talking about doubleclicking a project file, it's easy enough in his case to do the drag and drop thing. I do it all the time as I go back and forth through a set of mini projects throughout the day.

Rob