Can Vegaspro5 render HD (1080p) project for HD quality playback on youtube, and, also to be opened in a bluray-authoring app and maintain the project's HD image quality?
It largely depends on what flavor of HD you plan on working with. If you need to work with AVCHD video, I doubt Vegas 5 will work. Vegas 5 was capable of working with 1440x1080 HDV video and able to render 1920x1080 progressive resolution files to various formats. So it really just depends what exact kind of HD you plan on working with.
I plan on using Nikon D7000.
VegasPro5 rendering template options list indicates:
HDV 1080 60i
HDV 1080 50i
1) Since Nikon D7000 1080p is 24fps, would that be a problem when editing? And, would Vegas5 still be able to render it to HDV quality ?
2) Vegas5 does not show MPEG-4 on the list of render-to file types. For MPEG types, it only shows 1 and 2. Does MPEG-2 work on Youtube, and, for web streaming video ?
Templates are just that ... templates. You can change almost all of the settings to be anything you wish. Change the frame rate to 24 and interlacing to none, and you now have 1080p 24fps. It's that simple.
I'd stay away from MPEG-2 since the playback systems may not have an MPEG-2 decoding license installed. MPEG-1 at sufficiently high bitrates is nearly indistinguishable from progressive MPEG-2 and has no restrictions. It's probably possible to install an MPEG-4 codec which would then be accessible in Vegas under AVI -> uncompressed -> custom, which will then show a dropdown list of installed codecs.
May I suggest using the free Handbrake to render to YouTube?
And something similar to create the HDV/MPEG-2 files that Vegas 5 can use already.
Besides, HD is pretty demanding, so much so that I would not want to try and shoehorn it into a Vegas version that practically pre-dates widespread HD adaptation.
@A. Grandt:
So then, convert the 1080 into HDV or MPEG-2 before editing, and then render to MPEG-2 ? By the time it's presented, would be 3rd generation? If the computer is fast enough, why not just import directly, since Vegas5 is open format ?
Vegas may understand a lot of formats, but it can not use formats it does not understand.
That goes for anything.
Unfortunately the recodes will mean multiple generations. But use a high enough bitrate and you should be reasonably fine. I doubt Vegas5 will be though.
As musicvid suggested, download the trial version of Vegas 10 instead.