Bob, I completely agree, and I thank you for the input here.

But what is the process in Vegas to keep start to finish as clean as possible?
I THEEENK 32bit helps avoid banding? And would GUESS less plugins equals less manipulations which means less chance for artifacts?

lossless in Vegas? you just need LOTS of temp storage space

SETUP
0) match settings
1a) if it's cuts-only, with no fades, filters, etc; use 8-bit, you may be able to smart-render, if not, skip to Final Output (below)
1b) stay 32-bit if you're doing anything other than straight cuts; fades, filters, you need higher than 8-bit to avoid any potential loss.
2) make any renders lossless until final output

FINAL OUTPUT
3a) (loss involved here) render to BD, DVD, DNxHD, etc
3b) (no loss) render to lossless image-sequence or AVI

a) don't forget, scopes are your friends!
b) yes, 32-bit gives the headroom needed to prevent banding from increasing.
c) fewer filters are always better: less pixel-pushing = less damage to the image.

"But what is the process in Vegas to keep start to finish as clean as possible?"

Obviously avoiding any lossy intermediates is the go. I've never really noticed any loss through the Vegas 8 bit pipeline myself. Compared to what most cameras are capable of and the horrors of encoding for delivery in my opinion devoting too much attention to the processing pipeline isn't very productive.

"I THEEENK 32bit helps avoid banding?"

Possibly however I've only once had a banding issue. Keep in mind many display devices can cause banding.

"And would GUESS less plugins equals less manipulations which means less chance for artifacts?"

In theory yes but keep in mind the Vegas pipeline is 8 bits per RGB channel, most of us cannot afford cameras that good. One thing I'd suggest is to avoid doing any FX processing that needs doing more times than absolutely necessary. Certainly switching to 32bpc gets around that but not all FXs are 32bit. Having to apply less correction in post by getting exposure correct and having scenes well lit if possible really helps.
Simple example, only recently I worked out my camera has 5% IRE setup on the blacks. Dialing that out in the camera helps.

Bob.

I am mainly editing Sony AVCHD these days. I use Vegas 9c , the last version that will smart render Sony AVCHD, but it is a bit flakey (do a Save-As often!). Unmodified AVCHD is passed through without change. Once rendered out, I can reuse the result without further rendering. I understand, however, that some AVCHD material doesn't smart render with 9c, and that is why SCS removed the ability in later versions of Vegas.

DVD Arch will make a BD without re-rendering AVCHD, but it has a bug such that the skip function doesn't work on my Panasonic BD player, so I make my BDs with TMPGEnc Authoring Works. (I tried Adobe Encore but I can't make it not re-render).

PS
Another bug with 9c is that a mixture of still photos and AVCHD is unreliable, so I first convert the stills to AVCHD separately, and then add them to my main project. These clips then smart render.

PPS
Smart rendering has two big advantages. Besides maintaining video quality it is much quicker. I wish SCS had concentrated on making smart rendering more reliable than fiddling around with GPU rendering.

tried to do some reading before I came back....

so... Vegas Pro 11 does this "Smart Rendering" automatically, if I tread it right?
In the older version you had to choose it?