Thank you, Steve. Will I have to adjust the pixel aspect ratio?

"[I]Will I have to adjust the pixel aspect ratio?[/I]"

No need to change the PAR. Use a 16x9 crop in Pan/Crop. If you don't want the two vertical black bars when you use the [I]DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream[/I] render template you can check the Adjust source media to better match the project or render settings option in Project Properties.

Personally, I prefer to edit HD material in an HD project, then render to SD. It's more of an equity proposition than technical. I paid to acquire in HD. I paid for the equipment and software to edit in HD. I find it hard to accept that I should have to preview in SD while I edit so that others can cling to their 1997 technology.

I expect the people that work in 4K feel the same about me.

Thank you, John. Yes, I did discover that I had to use a 16x9 crop, only took me an hour to figure it out. LOL.

Fred

The basic principle regarding project settings is that they set the environment for editing.

Your source and final render could each use different settings if you want, but it usually makes life easier for your computer, and hence you, if the project settings match your source, because Vegas then has to do least to display your video during editing. There may be times, however when matching your output would be better.

Note that I am talking about computer responsiveness while editing. The final render quality would be the same.

Since your source is interlaced, and your output will be interlaced, make sure that you set your deinterlace method to blend or interpolate (it doesn't matter which) in the project properties. This tells Vegas to re-size your video a field at a time rather than a frame at a time.

Since I was tinkering with Project Property options, I decided to make a to demonstrate the effects of the [I]Adjust source media to better match the project or render settings[/I] option.

This video also demonstrates the tendency that a lot of people have to twiddle with knobs in spite of not knowing what they are doing.

You can also tick the "Stretch to fill" check box under the render options or render to 704x480 if you are in NTSC land, 704x576 for PAL.

I edit with the settings the footage is shot in. When the footage matches the project you get the fastest preview.

I've done this a lot so here's a few things you'll notice:
*HD project settings have generated media look better when rendered to SD (because the generated media matches the project settings when it's first created).
*You can only crop in so far with HD. You still want the full DV res.
*Be prepared to do a LOT of manual pans to make things look smooth.
*If you zoom out & use the pan/crop to zoom in to compensate it won't look as good as if you zoomed with the camera. Nothing you can do about it.
*If you're doing outside FX (IE in Blender, etc) render at 1/2 HD resolution. You won't notice a difference in the final product & will cut the rendering time down quite a bit (found this out with a production of Peter Pan & adding sparkes to everyone flying).

Just some tips for ya.

Thanks, everyone. This forum just cannot be beat!

Here a little poser; If you're working on an HD project and crop/zoom down to acceptable size for DVD OUTPUT, And then render as HD. It looks C*r*a*p. (Expected) If you then render as SD...same result. But if you use DVD project settings as above, and render to DVD. It looks fine. Can someone explain?

I'm not sure I agree with your premise.

If you're working on an HD project and crop/zoom down to acceptable size for DVD OUTPUT, And then render as HD. It looks C*r*a*p.

If you then render as SD...same result.

But if you use DVD project settings as above, and render to DVD. It looks fine.

The videos in the links were executed as you described for each case. I didn't see a profound improvement from having the project properties set to match the expected DVD output. The HD render looks a little better than the SD version even though the 853x480 crop was not full HD pixel dimensions. For the HD render I used 21 mbps as the target bit rate, typical of [I]Blu-ray[/I].

You've misread my post John (or more like I haven't explained myself properly) . I was wondering why as per Steve's post you would get good results just by setting the project for DVD: "Since your final output will be a DVD (which is 720x480), you should set up your project with these specs. You'll then be able to zoom in to your 1920x1080 video with minimal loss of resolution."

Which is pretty much your conclusion.