Thanks for your continuing help Q. As far as the dinging, I figured out that it was my screen saver. I had it turned off, as I have heard that is a good idea when rendering things. HOwever, when it was set to go to screen saver mode (at 15 minutes of inactivity) I would get the ding. At least on mystery solved! I just made a new 150 frame movie, w/out mimic, but using the BG textures and it worked. I'll try again by adding a mimic pose now (I also rendered at 160 x 160 instead of 320 x 320 to try to speed things up a bit. Don't know if that would have an effect on the actual success or failure though) I'll post my 'testing' results when I get them. thanks all. K