prerendered files

I have been using vegas for a while and was looking around for some hard drive space when I found a lot of files labeled as "prerendered video file" followed by a number. It appears whenever I have rendered a project, it has cut the project into these files as it was rendering?? Is there a use for them or will I be able to delete them, and still be able to use the original veg file to make changes and re-render my projects? Thanks.

Thanks for the info. I haven't been doing a lot of pre-renders and that's why I was suprised to see so many files with that designation. Happy New Year Edward!

File > Properties > Prerendered files folder will tell you where the default location is.
This is one of several folders that I always change the location of, preferably to a different hard drive so as to not clog my drive C.

Think of a prerender as a (potentially very) long RAM render.
I use it a lot when I want to see what a section looks like at Best/Full that's too long for a RAM render.

From the online help menu:

From the Tools menu, choose Selectively Prerender Video to render temporary preview files for the sections of your project that cannot be rendered in real time. These temporary preview files are used when you play back that section of the project.

When you perform a selective prerender, a separate preview file is created for each section of your project that needs to be prerendered. Sections that contain transitions, effects, and compositing will need to be prerendered; unprocessed DV media files will not.

Selective prerendering is helpful when previewing on an external monitor.

I do too Kelly but I sure don't miss the cost of being able to do that :)