Peter, thanks so much for the quick reply. I can't tell you how important this is and how much we need an educated answer to this question. Thanks as well for the tip on "media info" that worked really well. I've pasted the information you requested below. I'll reiterate what we're trying to accomplish so it's clear. We shoot our media in the format below, ingest the P2 media into Sony Vegas 10 using the Raylight plugin, and we'd like to export in H.264, MP4 keeping the file as small as possible while at the same time maintaining broadcast quality... hopefully this makes sense... as I said I'm not an expert. Thanks in advance for your guidance... I really appreciate it.


General
Complete name : C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\0001VM.MXF
Format : MXF
Commercial name : DV
Format profile : OP-Atom
Format settings : Closed / Complete
File size : 1.08 GiB
Duration : 2mn 40s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 57.5 Mbps
Encoded date : 2011-12-20 01:09:12.000
Writing application : Panasonic P2 2.0
Writing library : Panasonic P2 2.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : DV
Format_Settings_Wrapping : Clip
Duration : 2mn 40s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Encoded bit rate : 28.8 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:2
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Stream size : 468 MiB (42%)
Encoded stream size : 552 MiB (50%)

Audio #1
ID : 1-0
Format : PCM
Muxing mode : DV
Duration : 2mn 40s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Encoded bit rate : 0 bps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 29.5 MiB (3%)
Encoded stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Audio #2
ID : 1-1
Format : PCM
Muxing mode : DV
Duration : 2mn 40s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Encoded bit rate : 0 bps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 29.5 MiB (3%)
Encoded stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

"difficult to maintain quality and still get it in the container they want. "

Quality is easy. It's not really the container that matters, it's the file size. You can pick nearly any codec/container combination and get crystal clear quality as long as you use a high enough bitrate. I think this is the single biggest encoding factor that most "newbs" overlook.

Use a higher bit rate and you can get really good video, at the expense of producing a proportionately larger output file.

The MP4 container is mandated by our higher headquarters... unfortunately, we HAVE to use that format... any suggestions in that arena?

There are a couple of reasons that a number of us render to something master quality like DNxHD .mov then rerender into H264 .mp4 using Handbrake.

1/ Better quality at lower bitrates. Yes you can do H264 mp4 in Vegas. Yes you can make it look good by using higher bitrates. For low bitrate nice compact h264 mp4 files though, Handbrake is way better.

2/ Better scaling to delivery size. Vegas uses something like bicubic resizing in it's best quality resize algorithm. Handbrake's lancos 3 resize looks way better.

3/ Better deinterlacing. Handbrake's "decomb" filter looks way better than Vegas's beld fields or interpolate deinterlace. Yes you can use a third party smart deinterlacer, but it's tricky, and it still rarely looks as good.