> The groom has a Blue Ray player and I'd like to burn some kind of Hi Def disk that will play in it but don't know a thing about BlueRay.

Blu-ray is the next generation disc format that supports high definition video. It supports disc media that can hold single layer 25GB and double layer 50GB of information instead of 4.7GB and 8.5GB of DVD's respectively. It also uses a new file system so old DVD players cannot play Blu-ray discs but strangely enough, your DVD burner can burn this format to DVD media but it cannot read it. To truly take advantage of Blu-ray you should have a Blu-ray burner on your PC and and a Blu-ray player hooked up to you HD TV. It sounds like the groom is all set on his end.

> I've read here that I can burn Hi Def video onto a DVD using a regular DVD burner. Is this true? I've read quite a number of threads but they were way over my head.

Yes. You can burn the Blu-ray format onto regular DVD media with your DVD burner. You can get about 40 minutes of 15Mbps AVCHD on regular DVD media. The problem, however, is that not all Blu-ray players can play these so I would never make one of these to give to someone because you never know if it will play. Or if it does play, will it play in the next Blu-ray player they buy? (too unpredictable) If you want to deliver Blu-ray you really should buy a Blu-ray burner and discs.

> Can someone reply and give me a fairly easy to follow method of rendering and burning Hi Def video that will play in a wide variety of players including BlueRay?

No. The key words here are "play in a wide variety of players including BlueRay". Nothing will play Blu-ray except Blu-ray. So there is no way to make a disc that will play in DVD players and be HD. What you need to do is create two discs. One for people with Blu-ray players and one for people with DVD players.

To make a Blu-ray disc:

From within Vegas you can use Tools | Burn Disc | Blu-ray Disc... and burn a Blu-ray formatted disc without menus to regular DVD media or to Blu-ray media if you have a Blu-ray burner (which it sounds like you don't).

If you want to author a Blu-ray disc with menus then you need to render from Vegas to Sony AVC using one of the "Blu-ray" templates that closely matches your camera format. Then drop that into a DVD Architect project that is set to Blu-ray. You can burn this to DVD media but as I said, it may not play on the groom's Blu-ray player. It is best to burn to Blu-ray disc.

To answers your original subject question: There is no "general purpose output". Video is targeted to distinct playback devices and you often need to render to multiple formats to optimize the video for each.

~jr