For the purposes you're wanting, just opening up a new instance of Vegas to edit with will solve the problem.

Coming back? Probably not. First, it only worked on rendered formats and 99% of us are using encoded formats, notwithstanding that Sony put the encoding formats in the "render as" menu. Second, with the availability of multi-core processors, network renderfarms became obsolete..

Actually, I don't think that render farms are obsolete. In fact, every time compute power increases, some new thing (3D, for example) comes along which requires even more CPU cycles, and makes render times even on modern multi-core computers, longer than many people want to deal with.

There were two different forms of Vegas network rendering. One simply let you send a render to another computer so your main editing computer didn't get bogged down when a render operation was underway. This is what the OP asked about, but I never thought it was very useful because I could simply set the first instance of Vegas to a lower priority (using Windows Task Manager). Once I did this, my second instance of Vegas (where I was editing another project) would be as responsive as it would be without having a background render operating. This was true even with my old single-thread, single core computer.

The second type of network rendering is where a Vegas project file could be sent out in "chunks" to multiple computers, with each remote computer rendering a portion of the project. Steve makes a good point that the stitching required to take these chunks and string them all together only worked on DV AVI files and not much else, thus making this form of network rendering useless when trying to do something as simple as an MPEG-2 render for a DVD.

Of course, this is a problem that could be solved: even Vegas can (under the right circumstances) "smart render" MPEG-2, and that is basically what is required to stitch together segments from each render computer. However, Sony doesn't own most of their render code, most notably the MPEG-2 code which is licensed from MainConcept. It has always appeared to me that Sony has not gotten (I don't know if they asked ...) cooperation from MainConcept to make changes so that this stitching could be easily done at the end of network rendering.

Multi-core computers certainly reduce rendering times, and therefore make network rendering less of an issue for those doing fairly simple projects. For those doing projects with huge amounts of compositing, fX, etc., render times can still be frighteningly long, and in those cases a true render farm is still important. However my guess is, from reading these forums over the year, that not many Vegas users fall into this category.

Yep, the impression i've got from reading the posts about network rendering was that *MOST* used it to render in the background rather than farm the process out to another computer (or computers). This was always a completely unnecessary use anyway, since running simultaneous instances of Vegas works just as well, if not better.

I've also noted that every single question about it's lack in version 10 has been someone wanting it for this use and not any other.

Video just requires a lot of network bandwidth to make large projects viable on most networks. If Vegas could use remote computers to render just small parts w/o sending lots of data then it could be very viable. There was no point in network rendering with my wife's laptop because by the time everything was transferred over the network my computer would have a large chunk done. Example: Instead of copying my whole 50gb worth of video over to every machine just break up the .veg file, transfer the data that's in that part of the .veg file to the other computer, render, then send the results back. This could be images, parts of videos, etc. What it did before was just run a render-only instance on another machine that required lots of data instead of sending chunks to be rendered.
This would require that a Vegas master server that had all the proper encoders/renders and clients that would be able to understand how to use the .veg file, the parts it would render, etc. Just like torrenting a file really.

It is true that a second instance of Vegas can do the rendering while you use the first instance to continue editing. If you have a long rendering job, that's the way to go.

But with my most common daily projects this does not apply. I typically have a video recording of a long interview (over an hour). I identify a short snippet (a question and an answer), do a bit of tinkering with it, and render it to a file. While it is rendering (which takes around a minute on my current machine) I want to look for the next snippet and work on it. Staring at the rendering progress bar for that minute is very painful. But saving my project, opening it in another instance of Vegas, starting the render there, and returning to my current instance would take close to 30 seconds. What's worse, it's repetitive and tedious. In Vegas 9, I simply checked the "network render" box, clicked OK, and right away I could go one editing. No saving, no reopening, no switching between windows--two seconds, and my brain just rolls along.

Now that mode of working is no longer possible.

You can have more than one Version of Vegas on the same machine.

For the projects that would be more convenient to network render, save them in Vegas 9 and open them in Vegas 9.

For me, network rendering turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

But saving my project, opening it in another instance of Vegas, starting the render there, and returning to my current instance would take close to 30 seconds. What's worse, it's repetitive and tedious.

If I know I'll be using multiple instances then I normally have multiple ones open before I start rendering. Habit. In Vegas 10 new instances seem to open in seconds compared to tens of seconds like before, not sure why. Memory limits are only per-instance too so five instances don't stack memory on top of each other, they're all in their own memory space.

If you're rendering such small (or fast, doesn't matter) areas that don't take long then why bother? I only do it when it actually saves me time. You could just do all your editing, make regions and then batch-render them all at once, or a group at once. You may find this speeds things up because still clicking "network render" takes some time and instead of doing that 60 times a project (at 5 seconds each would add 5 minutes to project time) you could do it twice (you could have a script be a shortcut in the toolbar) and get the same results with less time used (10 seconds).

I liked to use the network rendering as a simple queue of jobs. On Vegas 9, I could submit a bunch of renders to the queue and then go do something else (like sleep) and in the morning everything is done. How can I do that on Vegas 10/11 now without network rendering?

There are 2 ways to do that in Vegas 10/11:
1) Open multiple instances of Vegas
2) Use commercial plug-ins: Vegasaur, Vegas Production Assistant, VASST UltimateS etc.

Most of the new software are releasing to address the scalebility to improve the performance , But Sony Vegas is going backward by removing network rendering. , If it is licensing issue with MainConcept or some other company then they should still incorporate this Network Rendering as separate package and charge it to customers who need this network rendering feature.
Also note that Network rendering can be used to run it on Cloud infrastructure withing few minutes.
I wish Sony can provide network rendering in Sony Vegas soon.

A couple months ago I sent in a suggestion about making the network renderer more like Adobe Encoder with the ability to setup a group of templates, give it a file and output three or four different formats. I think I had three or four other suggestions in there also.

Maybe that will bring it back. ;-)

Thanks for the pointer to Vegasaur -- I will take a look.

But I still think that I have a problem. I have Vegas Production Assistant and use the Target Output when I have a single *.veg file that needs several different output formats (mp4, wmv, mpg, etc).

But I use the network render when I have many *.veg files that need to be rendered. With the network renderer, I could open a *.veg file and launch a render. Then I could open the next *.veg file and launch another render which got put in the queue behind the first render. The list then goes on with many more *.veg files. With the network renderer, I could stuff as many projects (with separate *.veg files) into the queue, then come back in the morning and they were all done.

Is there any way in Vegas 11 (with 3rd party tools or tricks) that will let me do what I describe above?

Vegasaur allows you to do it. Download the fully functional trial and see for yourself. You can freely use it within 30 days.

Or just get an SSD for your boot drive. Vegas will open from an SSD in less than 5 seconds. Does for me anyway.

There was little point in it coming back when the performance of the 'average' CPU now far exceeds any possible benefits, that are restricted by Ethernet speed.

But now with possible USB3 or Thunderbolt connections, may become relevent again ?

geoff