Lost Video Island

[phanna]

This isn't a technical question, so much as a strategic one.

So long story short I have almost 3,000 subscribers on youtube and have been well-versed in windows movie maker. But I got Sony Vegas for Christmas, and I'm learning a lot about it, uploading clips and just toying with the various built-in tutorials, modifying elements to see the effect, watching youtube tutorials, etc.

The biggest problem I'm encountering as I try to get my feet in Sony Vegas, is that in Windows Movie Maker I would take my hours-long recorded clips of video games, cut out 5-20 second portions I liked from each given video, and store all these hundreds of clips in the built-in folder hierarchy, making new folders for type (eg funny, skilled, etc), moving clips here or there, storing them like finished movie files on a computer. Then when it came time to make my movie, I would navigate the clips, add them to the timeline as I pleased, edit, and produce.

Is there any equivalent to the above in Sony Vegas, or how would anyone suggest I get the same end result? I really don't want to export each 5-20 second video clip to an actual file and then play with those, nor do I want to drag the massive hours-long videos on and slice out only the parts I liked, trying to shuffle-organize hundreds of clips on the timeline all at once. Any suggestions or insights are very much appreciated.

Thank you so much!
youtube.com/dphanna