Those awfully nice people at Womble (http://www.womble.com/products/mvw.html) have written a wonderful utility (http://www.womble.com/tools/edl2wbp.zip) which will convert a Vegas EDL (Edit Decision List) into a Womble Mpeg Video Wizard project.

If you have a load of trimmed HDV clips on your Vegas timeline, then export an EDL, then convert it with this program, the trimmed files open up on the Womble timeline. Once there you can smart-render them (i.e. archive them without re-encoding) according this method (from Kathy at Womble):

- turn on the "Frozen" by clicking on
the '*' sign in the time code box of timeline's toolbox,
which is located immediately under the time code
(See HTML help section on "About the Timeline")
- open the "Trim manager" window via the Input monitor
context menu
- select the clips on the timeline via Ctrl + A for all clips,
or Ctrl + mouse click for selected group
- drag and drop them into the list window of the Trim Manager
- the convention for naming a trimmed clip can be changed
in the Option -> Export page
- the default output file path can be changed via the context
menu of the trim list

This means you can archive your HDV .m2t files without re-encoding them (but note that Womble may re-encode the very ends of the clips) and is a great workaround until Vegas has smart-rendering.

This came about as a result of the thread Main Concept m2t for HDV archive... lossless? (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=498723).

Not that this script to export a Womble trim list file (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=498955) can be used to achieve the same result.