Spot thanks!

I just did extensive test and found that if I render from the Cineform intermediates, I get very thin, slightly-diagonal, one pixel, one frame lines. I used footage of a basketball court because there is lots of movement, and the lines of the court drive the encoder crazy. For each test I went all the way from HDV to the SD DVD and viewed on a large NTSC SD monitor. No problems rendering from the m2t files.

As to pan/cropping to 4:3, exactly what is it I am supposed to be careful to avoid?

Tips:

In general you shouldn't need to swap back to the native HDV files when it comes time to create the finished master file- the HDV intermediate .avi files you already rendered (which use the Cineform codec) are totally usable as "on-line" source files. If for some reason you aren't getting the quality result you need (as you state, not sure why that is), you could switch back to the native HDV source material prior to final render, but the memory handling in Vegas is far better with the Cineform (or Sony DV or Sony YUV) codec, so watch out for that if you have a long timeline.

When downconverting from HD (any flavor) to SD (any flavor), use BEST quality rendering in Vegas. As with stills, the higher frequency frame data of the HD source material will quite often benefit from the use of the BEST setting when changing resolutions.

Since HDV project settings and 4:3 SD DVD project settings are quite different, I would advise using the destination format settings (SD DVD) as the project settings. This isn't just about cropping and motion- safe areas and composite placement adjustments may also be called for, especially when going from 16:9>4:3 as it appears you are doing. Framerate too is worthy of attention if you are changing it (sounds like you aren't here). So in short, take the time to make everything look good in the project template that most closely matches your delivery. If you have multiple delivery targets, check how things will look for each destination format prior to rendering by modifying the project template.

No it isn't unbelievably easy and it takes some patience but in essence you are trying to put 1440x1080 par 1.333 widescreen into a 720 x480 par .9091 4:3 file...and they aren't even multiple so adjustments need to be made.

If you stayed 16:9 all the way through the downconvert from an HDV (16:9) project to a 16:9 DVD there would be far less interrvention required in the final step.

All that said, shooting 1080 60i HDV and delivering 60i SD will give you a very different and almost always superior picture quality over
DV. Plus, should the day come when you need an HD master, you'll be ready*.

*That day might be sooner than you think. Just about every modern computer comes with... a high def display, the computer monitor!. Since you can park an HD WM file as an "extra" using DVDA 3, you could today put an HD program on a regular DVD alongside the standard DVD data and your computer (or a network player like the iodata) will be able to play that, and a 1280x720 30p WM file will look FAR better playing back on a computer than than a blown-up 720x480.

Forum Admin: You need to pop in here more often! <G> Good tips on the wmv!

I would also add that for the best quality rendering (if you are patient enough, I am):
Best project setting;
Best render setting;
On the video tab of the render options, make sure the quality settings are maxed out. I've found a few presets where the quality was not optimal.

Sony,

Several small surprises in your recommendations:

I would advise using the destination format settings (SD DVD) as the project settings.

This is the first surprise. I would think that any generated media would look better if it starts at higher resolution project settings. Also, I have no way of knowing when the downsampling occurs, so I wanted to put that off until the latest point in the workflow. However, you know better than I what is correct, so I will use SD project settings when creating a project from HDV for SD delivery.

As for the Cineform intermediate, I have a test case that clearly shows a fairly major problem when trying to render from a 1080i Cineform intermediate that was rendered from the m2t file, using the Best rendering setting.

Finally, do you have to set Best when rendering to the Intermediate? There is no resolution or framerate change, and my testing showed very little difference (the thin line bug was very slightly less pronounced on the Cineform intermediate that had been rendered using the Best setting.

The concern for P/C is that you can accidentally shift a field off when you P/C.
I've only done 16:9-4:3 experimentally for testing; going HD all the way to the last second has done by far best for me, if you have to go 4:3 at all. Going to a widescreen project by far works best.
Try it with:
1. HDV
2. Generated media (Noise generator works best, with some animation)
3. Stills
All on HDV project timeline.
Do the exact same project in SD settings.
All on the same timeline, none of them longer than 15 seconds. Burn both to DVD. Look at all 3 on one file.

Thanks for the all the help everyone. It has been very helpful.

I still don't have all the answers, but I'm going to proceed making my HDV -> SD DVD project by following the Sony advice and using SD NTSC DV project settings, cropping to get the 4:3 aspect ratio (using my scripts, which compute the correct pan/crop setting to five decimals, to avoid any black lines at the edges), and then rendering using the Best settings in the Render As dialog.

Because of the clear bug I've found in the Cineform codec (described in my earlier post), I'll be rendering from the m2t files. The thin line bug is quite repeatable. I've seen other things as well having to do with audio sync, and also with frame offset (if I line up the Cineform above the m2t file and go back and forth, I see up to a +-2 frame offset, although I think this is due to Vegas not buffering m2t intermediate frames which would be necessary for frame-accurate MPEG editing). I haven't been able to devise a test yet to see if this finds its way all the way out to the final render or not.

I do sometimes get the feeling that people on this forum must have a different clientele than I do. The people I deal with are parents of the kids in the high school play, sports team, or ballet. They do not have tons of money and are not early adopters. If you ask them what they watch, they will call it TV, not Hi-Def or HD or anything else. These people hate letterbox movies. They want something that fills the screen. Despite the inroads that letterbox DVD and HD has made, I am almost certain that over 50% -- and perhaps a good deal more -- of the people in this country (U.S.A.) still watch 4:3 TV. If I delivered the dance concert I'm shooting tomorrow in wide-screen, I'd be shot. Same with the Nutcracker performance from last month, and all the countless football, basketball, volleyball, baseball, and other games I've filmed over the years.

This will change, that's for sure.

But not yet, and certainly not now. Not for my clients.

Yeah, it depends on the age of your audience. The mode I would love to have access to would be the 16:9 PS that no authoring software seems to support. It fills the screen on both 4:3 and 16:9 sets, cropping the two sides on a 4:3 set. I've seen standalone DVD players that will set this flag, but no software that can do it.

I've noticed the difference between m2t and the intermediate files. Now, perhaps I've missed something obvious, but with an HDV project in Vegas 6.0c, clips captured from FX1 via Connect HD 2.1, the m2t files are actually slightly slower than the intermediate avi's - i.e., there isn't a constant frame offset from the start of the clip, although it would appear so if checking a random point near the start - but rather a drift that was closer to 12 frames after 45 seconds (i.e. the m2t file contains 15 extra frames for the same length of footage, or so I am guessing). I checked this using a frame at the end of the clip where the scene changes (clip wasn't split exactly on this frame), and counted backwards to where the avi intermediate change to that frame.

Is this a factor of m2t (streams) being previewed in a DV project? Based on what I've read in this thread and others, I don't see much gain in rendering from the m2t files, esp. if they aren't synced to the intermediates. Is this just user error on my part since I haven't seen this posted before; a capture error; or something else?

Other clips from the same capture session exhibited the same problem, but from a previous session, the offset was only 2 frames after 7 minutes.