It's called a nested veg.
Import the veg file like you would any other media into the project you're working on.
Be advised though that it'll come in as a single video track and stereo audio only, no matter how many tracks the original has.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
<edit>Sorry, I should have read John's response. He akready brought this up.
BusterKeaton said "You can no longer drag a veg to an open window without nested it either. The quickest option is still File > Open. "
I'll say it again. Drag the second veg file onto Vegas' title bar and Vegas will close the current project (asking nicely if you want to save) and open the new one. All in the same instance of Vegas, without nesting the Veg file.
If the problem is that a second instance of Vegas is opened when you doubleclick a veg file then it's super simple to just drag that second veg onto the vegas titlebar. Even quicker than file>open since you've already got your mouse on the file.
The second, and very different, problem is monobass' example of having external programs add media files to an existing instance of Vegas. The only external program I know of that does that is Vidcap. Not helpful.