My project properties only has 1140 X 1080 listed with HDV. My video is not HDV, should I still set the template to HDV 1440 X 1080?

You said your video is not HDV.
If it's regular DV, what I think JJK meant was to reduce your images to that pixel size.
The usual recommendation for digital stills is to shrink them down to 2X project size.
For NTSC DV, this would be 1440 X 960.
If you plan to do deep zooms, then this size would need to be increased depending on the amount of zoom required.

Also, to get maximum viewing quality, your Preview window must be set to Best/Full.
Preview /Auto is fine during editing but switch it up as needed.

Mike

In Vegas if you have roughly 2272 x 1580 jpg pictures on the timeline or larger and you have the project properties set at NTSC DV they will look real fuzzy especially if you change the aspect to 16 x 9. Anyway that's what happens to me. You can do all your editing with the project set to HDV and later render to any format you desire.
JJK

I have my preview window set correctly. What I am looking to do is improve the quality of my rendered project. I did a project with the properties set to 1440 X 1080 and the preview in Vegas Pro looked great but after rendering and opening in DVDA the pics were noisey again.

> I did a project with the properties set to 1440 X 1080 and the preview in Vegas Pro looked great but after rendering and opening in DVDA the pics were noisey again.

I assume you still rendered to standard definition DVD? Here are the problems:

(1) Your images are 10 mega pixel and NTSC DVD is less than 1 mega pixel. You have 9x more resolution than you need. So you need to set your expectations accordingly.

(2) Vegas is a video editor. It's main purpose is not to accurately resize 10 mega pixel images to less than 1 mega pixel yet that is what you are asking it to do 30 times a second. You would get much better results if you resized them with an image editor whos main purpose *is* to resize images.

Here is what you should do: Images are not interlaced and, unlike video, they use square pixels therefore you will get the best quality if you set your project to 24p and render to 24p so that your output is not interlaced either (you also have less frames to render which is an added bonus of 24p). Also, as someone suggested, use an image editor (e.g., Photoshop, Pain Shop Pro, etc.) to resize the images to 2x your output resolution in square pixels. If you are rendering as NTSC DVD 4:3 then your images should be resized to 720 * 2 = 1440 * 0.9091 = 1309 x 960. If you are rendering as NTSC DVD 16:9 then your images should be resized to 720 * 2 = 1440 * 1.2121 = 1745 x 960. This will make things easy for Vegas because it only has to do a 2x resize and you still have enough resolution to zoom in a bit. If you are not zooming at all, then by all means resize your images to 655x480 (4:3) or 873x480 (16:9). As I said, your image editor will do a much better job at resizing and you will get better quality. (i.e., the right tool for the right job)

~jr

I tried rendering at best quality and that helped a lot but it still can be better. I rendered at best quality without resizing the images, they where at their full resolution.

I've use quite a few stills, incl. NASA WorldWind satellite images of Earth for "faux" fly-over stuff, meaning that I like to use still photos a la Ken Burns -- panning, zoom, etc. Hence, I go with output output ratio in Pan/Crop, so "resizing" isn't an issue.

My rule of thumb has been, the larger the resolution of the still, the better quality is of whatever I do with them in Vegas. The only time I have grainy is if the image can't handle a really close look (= deep-in zoom).

If one un-checks "Maintain aspect ratio" in the file's Properties, that can also affect the quality of the still: If distortion goes too far, then imperfections creep in such as grain or blur.