You shouldn't have to mess with the quality levels in DVD Architect to get great video quality in your DVDs and BluRay discs. Increasing the levels above, say, 9 mbps on a DVD will not give you a better quality DVD. 9 is pretty much as good as it gets.

So there must be something else going on in your workflow. (BTW, this is assuming that you know DVDs are less than 1/4 the resolution of high-def video, so no DVD is going to look as good as your original high-def footage. But at 720x480, it still should look great otherwise -- just not as clear and detailed.)

(Also, I'm assuming your judging the quality by watching your finished discs on your TV -- NOT on your computer! DVDs and many BluRays are output as interlaced video -- which will look excellent on your TV but might look a little fuzzy on a computer. But I assume you know that too.)

That said, you say how you've set your project up but you don't say what model of camcorder you shot your video with or what the specs are of your video. If you want the best quality from your project, your video project settings should match your video specs. In other words, if you've got your video project properties set up for 1920x1080 interlaced and your camcorder is shooting at 1280x720 progressive ... thiings won't look good.

So basically the trick is:
1) Shoot with a good high-def camcorder.
2) Match your video project properties to your video specs.
3) To output your movie for a BluRay project, render it as Sony AVC/AVCHD 1920x1080. To output your movie for a DVD project, use Main Concept MPEG/DVD-ready NTSC. Some people prefer to output the video and audio separately and then combine them in DVD Architect; others just output them as a "program stream". It's up to you.
4) Create your DVD or BluRay in DVD Architect using the standard settings. A DVD will hold about 70-80 minutes of standard def video at full quality while a BluRay will hold about two hours of high-def.

Do that, and your disc should look as good as the original when played on a TV.

And if you need more information on this stuff, you may want to check out my Vegas Workflow course at lynda.com.

thanks to you both for the posts. I am watching on my tv and not my computer. I did match my project settings in Vegas to my shot footage. I suppose that I am just an incurable tinkerer and can't believe that I can't somehow magically improve the standard template! :) When I see that my DVDs don't look like the DVDs that I buy of Hollywood movies, or even HD stuff on youtube, I keep sliding stuff around searching for the holy grail of render settings.
I'll try to stick to the standard templates and see what my results are- thanks.
A point of clarification regarding rendering- hypothetically, if I render a project in Vegas at 20 mbps and then DVDA needs to down render it again at 9, will the quality of the video be higher, lower, or the same as a project rendered in Vegas at 9 to begin with? Again, thanks for sharing your knowledge, smart people!

"A point of clarification regarding rendering- hypothetically, if I render a project in Vegas at 20 mbps and then DVDA needs to down render it again at 9, will the quality of the video be higher, lower, or the same as a project rendered in Vegas at 9 to begin with? Again, thanks for sharing your knowledge, smart people! "

Anytime video is re-rendered in a lossy compression such as what is used for bluray and DVDs, the quality will be less. Always try to avoid re-rendering.

" . . . can't believe that I can't somehow magically improve the standard template! :) When I see that my DVDs don't look like the DVDs that I buy of Hollywood movies, or even HD stuff on youtube, I keep sliding stuff around searching for the holy grail of render settings."

Not gonna happen. Couple of things:
A DVD will retain 15% of the data from HD source. It's fifth grade math.
The encoders alone used for commercial DVDs cost many times the price of the whole Vegas editing suite.
If you sold your house, you wouldn't be able to afford even one of the lenses used to shoot mainscreen feature films.

Your "optimal" DVD bitrate settings are something like 2,000,000 - 6,000,000 - 9,500,000 VBR. Most people leave the minimum bitrate at the default, which is way too low. Sustained bitrates above 8 Mbps should be avoided because older players will stutter and spew smoke.

awesome- thanks for the reality check. Last question (I think)-
is a two pass better than a one pass on the render- any noticeable benefits?

If you are using VBR, 2 pass will give you better results.

"Anytime video is re-rendered in a lossy compression such as what is used for bluray and DVDs, the quality will be less. Always try to avoid re-rendering."

I'll start out by mentioning that a lower bitrate is always going to be worse quality than a higher bitrate. So of course 9Mbps will look worse than 20.

However, following on to DonaldT's post, once the quality is lost it can't be restored. So even though 20 is higher than 9, if you take a 9Mpbs file and render it to a new 20, the new 20 will also look worse than the 9, because it's an additional decompress/recompress step.

The lesson is that in Vegas you should either render to a file that DVDA can use directly without recompression so it's only compressed once, or render to a lossless or nearly lossless file for DVDA to compress, so that it's still only compressed once.

See Knowledgebase article #84, through the links above.

Yes, you want 2 pass VBR.
'CBR is also fine, but does not distribute the bits efficiently, so you lose headroom.

MV10 hit the nail on the head. I would just add though that Vegas isn't great at downsizing. There are plenty of threads here on that topic - do a search. My personal preference is to use TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works for this.

I have done deinterlace and downscaling of avchd in Handbrake and exported as lossless i-frame back to Vegas for Dvda rendering.

It's truly awesome, but time consuming.

deinterlacing and downscaling in a separate program? to effectively do that, would you need to do that to every piece of video prior to using Vegas to edit? Probably too time consuming for my project. I've got about two hours of footage times 5 cameras that I sync up before I even get to start on the fun of editing.... ugh.

I truly appreciate all of the information. Would you mind educating me on what that process accomplishes technically? I know just enough about this stuff to be dangerous but am always interested in learning more about how video works.

btw to all- I know that everyone advised me to do it differently and perhaps I have messed it up, but my renders using the DVDA templates in Vegas at 9.8 Mbps just don't look as sharp a finished product as when I used a two pass VBR at 20 Mbps. Even though it took 3 hours to render in Vegas and another 2 to re-render to 9.8 in Architect, the file size is 25% larger and the quality just looks sharper than the straight DVDA render template from Vegas. I know it eventually only gets to 9.8 and is rendered twice but somehow it comes out cleaner and details look less washed out... not sure why.

out of curiosity, are you judging the quality by watching your files on a computer or on the final DVD?

in the final DVD on my TV.

" to effectively do that, would you need to do that to every piece of video prior to using Vegas to edit? "
I said it was time consuming, but in your situation, nowhere near what you seem to imagine.

1. Render the COMPLETED Vegas project to a DNXHD or other lossless intermediate. Render same resolution as source.
2. Encode to lossless x264 in Handbrake,using its superior decomb and scaling.
3. Import back to Vegas and render your DVD Architect compliant streams.
4. Author, prepare, and burn in Architect.

Whether or not that's too much effort for your project, I'm getting an increasing sense that your problems are not quality related, but workflow related.
While you are gaining that experience, keep in mind this acronym (Google it).

TIMTOWTDI

In my case I frame serve out from Vegas to TMPGEnc, so it's just one operation. Another search here on frameserve...:-)

tbh Arthur, I don't think the OP is ready for frameserving just yet, but why don't you post the links anyway?

Yes, I struggled a bit with the concept at first. Very simple once you get your head around it though.
This should help: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?forumid=4&messageid=894161

And there's also a link there to Nick Hopes thread on it.

thanks much for the continued tips- I followed the threads and am game to give it a try. From the posts it sounded as if this were a tip to decrease render times- does it also improve video clarity or offer additional benefits?

"From the posts it sounded as if this were a tip to decrease render times- does it also improve video clarity or offer additional benefits?"
Yes, slightly, and no, in that order.

Good question, btw.