"So I rendered again as AVI file, and it did not improve much." Can you expand on that? If you render to AVI then the output should match the input. Perhaps the viewer you are using isn't doing justice to the source material.

Your video is nothing but a bit-stream. As long as you got good video copied to the computer in the first place there is no reason you can't have good video in the end. Like Rustier says, each time you do something (like render to a different bitrate) you can lose bits, and thus some of the clarity of the original video. VMS won't lose those bits while you are editing (unless you intentionally do it by adding effects); it is when you generate the output that bits get lost.

So, take care to make sure you have a quality connection when you capture the video and be sure to not overcompress the output when you finally render.

So, are you both saying that outputting to camcorder won't give better quality than DVD? Are you saying that if I captured as mpeg, I should also render as mpeg? I'm not sure how I captured. How do I find that out? (Sorry to sound so stupid - I really am experienced with video editing, just not this program).
Thanks.

No, buying a fancy camcorder isn't going to help you -- the DVD should work just fine.

If you captured as MPEG (a compressed format) then as soon as you change the compression in any way you will start losing clarity. This is outside of my area of expertise, but, basically, you need to figure out how to have the MPEG after editing match the MPEG prior to editing. That is, with any removed pieces gone, but the remainder bit-for-bit the same. There are probably wiser people in the forum who can tell you the right thing to do.

I don't like working with compressed source video -- I have never gotten satisfying results from it.

Anyway, you need to go back and figure out where that video came from. If you can describe in detail how it was captured then maybe somebody can give more specific recommendations. Tell us if the camcorder uses tape, disc, etc. (the camcorder make and model number would be very helpful), what kind of wires you hooked to your camcorder, what software application you used to copy the video off the camcorder, the file extensions on the captured video clips (AVI, MPEG...) etc.

I captured with IEEE1394 cable, using Sony HDR-HC3 camcorder. I used digital tapes - some of the source video was HDV; some was SD. I captured in HD format (for HDV) and NTSCDV format for SD. I used Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 7.0 to capture, edit and render. I rendered as AVI and transferred to DVD Arch 4.0 to make DVD. I also rendered in MPEG format when I didn't like the outcome of AVI. Neither of the final videos looked better or worse than the other, but both were rather grainy and dark. I had also used photos (jpeg). I did use quite a few transitions; not sure if that made it worse. I have tried everything I could think of to improve the quality of the final movie. My last hope is that if I send to camcorder, I will have a movie as close to the source output as possible. I understand that you lose quality when compressing files. I hope this is enough info for someone to help me.
Thanks in advance.

That all sounds good. You should have good results.

OK, back to your original post. Did you put all three hours on a single DVD, or did you put just one hour on a single DVD? Hopefully, the latter. How did you break up the three hours? That is, did you create separate Vegas projects, or did you have Architect Studio (DVDAS) breakup the video at different in/out points of the three hour video? Do you know what bitrate DVDAS chose for rendering?

I made 3 separate Vegas projects (1 hr each), then sent each project separately to DVDA. The bitrate shows 2.000. Could that be the problem?

That bitrate is definitely a problem. The default is 8. You must have accidently hit that slider or something. Just click the "Fit to Disc" button and you should be golden.

Thank you Paul, I will keep trying. As one who is still learning the technical stuff about the software, I need all the help I can get. What is bitrate anyway?
Also, do you know anything about the Cineform video format in 7.0? Is there any benefit in rendering in that format?

Bitrate is essentially the number of bits that are used to represent a second of video. That is, if you are using 8mbps, then, on average, a second of video could require 8m bits. If a set of frames has a lot of pixels that are similar or the same then less data may actually be used to represent those frames. So, that means for images with lots of action, panning, zooming, etc., that is, frames that are constantly changing, a higher bitrate is needed to faithfully reproduce the image. In a scene that doesn't change much from one frame to the next (like a video of a person standing still with nothing going on behind them) then fewer bits are needed to represent a set of frames. Thus lower bitrates on fast changing video may result in poor quality, but the same bitrate on a static scene may be just fine. In general, your goal should be to use the highest bit rate you can and still fit everything on the disk. Well, I should qualify that; some players will be overwhelmed at really high bitrates. I think I heard somewhere that when you get past 9mbps you are pushing it. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to use 100% of the disk, but you should be shooting for better than 95%. DVDAS will do that for you if you select "Optimize disk" from the File menu and then click "Fit to Disk".

I don't do HD editing, so I can't tell you about Cineform. You can always go to the Vegas (full version) forum and do a search for "Cineform" -- you will find tons of topics. For example, try this topic.