It's not clear whether you changed your deinterlace setting to "interpolate," but that is most likely the cause of your problem. Here are some other ideas, in case you are still getting a fuzzy render.

When choosing the render template, check twice to make sure it is the DVD Architect template and not the DVD template. Then, once you choose that template, change only the Average bitrate and nothing else. Also, if this template has a checkbox that says something like "better match to source footage" (not all Vegas versions have this) make sure that is unchecked. Finally, make sure that the checkbox for better qualty is selected and that the quality slider is all the way to the right. Those should be the default settings and you shouldn't have to change them.

Note: if you start with DV footage and render it to DVD at 7,000,000 average bitrate or highter (don't go beyond 8.500,000) the resulting render should be very, very close in quality to the original. Yes, you can see differences if you look critically, or look at one frame at a time, but when watching on a TV set, it should look just as sharp as what you started with.

Other things to look at are your event and track settings. It is easy to bump one of the opacity sliders on an event or on the track settings. Also, did you add an fX to the track, or to the media, or to the project? Vegas lets you put fX at each of these levels, in addition to applying them to individual events, and it is easy to forget that you did this. One experiment you can run is to start a brand new project, drop the footage on a track, and immediately render 30-60 seconds of that video to MPEG-2. Put that in DVD Architect and burn it onto a DVD re-writeable. If that looks good, then you know that the problem lies with something you did during your editing in your problem project.

I'd also make sure you didn't change the resample setting for events. If you force resample, that can cause problems. Also, have you double-checked the frame rate of the original footage and compared that to the frame rate of the render? Lots of people have accidentally filmed using a 24p setting on their camcorder and then rendered using 29.97. Also, 24p from DV camcorders is an extremely complicated workflow because you have to take an extra step to get true 24p from the 29.97 video that gets stored on the DV tape. Any change in frame rate from the original will result in resampling (unless you turn it off) and this will indeed make the result look "fuzzy" or softer.

Those are ideas from my own catalog of mistakes made in the last fifteen years of doing this.

Here is the linf for the Video on youtube,..which looks great there,..but lousy on a DVD!



The Specs on the video from Mediainfo are there to and here they are again.

General
Complete name : E:\LASD 2013\LASDShow3_Act2_6_23_2013_1pm\Test6.mpg
Format : MPEG-PS
File size : 221 MiB
Duration : 3mn 20s
Overall bit rate : 9 223 Kbps

Video
ID : 224 (0xE0)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Duration : 3mn 20s
Bit rate : 8 816 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 8 000 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.851
Time code of first frame : 00:00:00:00
Time code source : Group of pictures header
Stream size : 211 MiB (96%)

Audio
ID : 192 (0xC0)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Duration : 3mn 20s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 224 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 5.36 MiB (2%)

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Thanks for your help again guys.

"Here is the linf for the Video on youtube,..which looks great there,..but lousy on a DVD! "

OK, you appear to have used the DVD video template, not the DVD Architect video template. This has already been mentioned a couple of times. As such, your video "may" have been re-encoded when you prepared and burned your project to DVD.

A properly prepared DVD will look no different than the supplied compliant video content! The reason is that it will be a bit-for-bit transfer, and not re-encoded. IOW, the Vegas-rendered video and the DVD Architect prepared video are identical in every respect if you've done it right.

Use the appropriate DVD Architect video template, and DVD Dolby AC3 Pro audio template, and render again in Vegas. That's two files! Let us know if there's any difference in the video; there certainly will be an improvement in the audio!

Thanks for the help, get back to you guys tomorrow and let you know whats up.

FOLLOW UP: Thanks again for all your helps guys , I followed all your great advice and have the video looking much better now. You guys really showed an old dog some new tricks. Thanks again.

Glad you got it figured out!

;?)

In general you should ALWAYS render separate Audio & Video streams when preparing source media for a DVD. DVD authoring software must provide individual A/V streams to the Muxer so it can combine everything from multiple audio language streams, and video angles, together with sub titles, and button over video sub-pictures into the resulting .VOB files.

If you have Vegas render combined A/V MPEG files, the first thing DVDA or any other DVD Authoring software must do is Demux the MPEG file to its individual A/V streams. And this can result in re-encoding in the process.

So if I were rendering with Subtitles or Another audio Track for commentary, would each of these require a seperate render before authoring?

'rendering with Subtitles or Another audio Track for commentary, would each of these require ...?'

NO, not exactly. Let's say you are creating a disc with four different video assets - each requires it's own video and audio stream render..that would be 8 rendered files that go in the DVD project directory for import and muxing inside of a DVDAPro. Stem name is different for 4 (four) different potential muxes.

Now, if you have added an additional commentary track of audio for one of the four video assets, that has to be rendered as an audio stream to be pulled into one of the pairings above mentioned. So that mux is going to have 1 video stream and 2 audio streams. Note that for best practice, if you are going for the additional audio track in one of the four pairings as above, you should create an empty audio track in DVDAPro to match the mux by 3 issue created for the entire disc title.

Same if you add a video track as an additional angle track - just follow the instructions of above paragraph.

Subtitles are really just pairings with the respective muxes inside of DVDAPro. But again if you add one subtitle track to video/audio stream pair mux 1 you should create empty subtitle tracks for the remaining 3 pairs inside of DVDAPro.

The authoring process and disc project creation to prepare for a disc is the muxing process going on inside DVDAPro.

One last piece of advice -- and this may be completely bogus -- is to use a field setting in the render that matches your source material. I'm not sure whether this is currently a problem, but several of us did some tests on an earlier version of Vegas and found that some detail appeared to be lost when you didn't match the field dominance between source and render. The DVD could care less and will be just as happy with upper or lower. Most DV video is lower field first, so that's what I think you should be using.

The Project Properties Indicates " Lower Fields ",..but in the Render As, Under " DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen Video Stream" then Customize Template I have " Upper Fields " selected, will this over ride the project properties or effect the video render quality poor?

The Project Properties Indicates " Lower Fields ",..but in the Render As, Under " DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen Video Stream" then Customize Template I have " Upper Fields " selected, will this over ride the project properties or effect the video render quality poor?Project properties are used primarily to help the video preview window more accurately reflect what the final project will look like. Most of that dialog does not affect anything about the render.

I am pretty sure that your original video is lower field first (right click on an event and look at the Properties). If this is the case, then you might get better results by choosing lower field in the MPEG-2 Render As dialog.

Again, as I stated above, this advice is based on a discussion from a few years ago, and while I definitely did see a difference between rendering upper vs. rendering lower field first -- even though there should have been no difference -- that was on a specific project with an earlier version of Vegas. Therefore I can't say for certain whether this will improve your result. It is certainly worth trying.

Yes, DVCAM is LFF if I recall, and I could never tell a difference in a DVD file from that source that was rendered upper or lower.

Same thing with mpeg-2 source that was acquired UFF. Although the DVD templates in Vegas default to LFF, I looked really hard for a difference and never could find one. The players don't seem to mind either.