Well I finally got my first anim to an .avi file..thanks to edward..and thought I would throw another question out there for you pros. Ready??
How can I edit my animation and not have to render all 300 frames again, in other words if I edit frames 80 thru 100 can I just re-render those frames and then rebuild the animation? I hope that makes sense, I'm not sure I understand it myself.

Pete

render your new frames …80-100… with the same filename as your original sequence - but render them to a new folder….
then when they are done, take the original frames 80-100 and move them to a backup folder, just in case
now take your new frames 80-100 and drop them into the folder containing the rest of the frames and make your new avi from there…

Now why didn't I think of that? Thanks arctor. I thought that they might overwrite the original frames but that didn't seem to work. You've saved me a lot of time, being new to this I do a lot of editing.
Thanks again,
Pete

np….I do this kind of thing all the time…there might be a better way but this way works

BTW arctor…I tried just re-rendering files 80 - 150 to the saved file and it overwrote the existing 80 - 150 files which is great if you know exactly what you want but bad if you make a mistake. I also did it your way and saved the files I wanted to edit and that seems a little safer because now I can replace the original files.
Thanks again,
Pete