Hmmm... Which part of the Preview Grab don't you like? Let's be precise about your observations. Please list what you don't like. I have my own thoughts but I don't want to prejudge yours so I invite you to name yours first.

As an additional thought getting the best from your HD to DVD falls into two main areas of prep:

1. Ensure all your assets are the best you can present to VP.
    
2. Be understanding about your up-rezzing options on and to your STB going to TV - Cornico is correct.

Bottom line, you could be doing better, but it will NOT look like a full blown HD prepped as a BR. There is compromise, and my now ancient SONY STB & BRAVIA has some HocusPocus image ability that's quite clever.

So, let's hear your Yuck List! - You're amongst friends here 😉.

funny how soon we forgot how bad vhs looked :-)

funny how soon we forgot how bad vhs looked :-)

Are you therefore suggesting that nothing can be done? And walk away?

In order to convert interlaced HD to interlaced SD it has to be converted to double frame rate progressive HD first, either implicitly within the video editor conversion process or explicitly by the user. In the past it was found with some video editors that somewhat better results could be obtained by doing the conversion as separate steps and by using third party software such as Virtualdub with appropriate plugin to do the required interpolation. I don't know how things stand today. If you are starting with progressive HD and are converting say 50p to SD 50i then this is not relevant. (DVDs use interlaced video in principle, but you can use say 25p instead of 50i).

If the HD source has a lot of repeated fine detail such as some clothing fabric or netting, then a modest amount of blurring before down conversion may be beneficial to minimise Moire effects. Also, a modest amount of sharpening after down conversion may help. The more you tweak, the better the result, especially if tailored to the source content.

Well said Peter.

Oh, I just looked at your project settings. Use deinterlace method "interpolate", not "blend fields" (assuming that your source is interlaced).

Yup. Did you also see the Tick ✅ Box for render Settings to comply or adjust the Media? Any thoughts on that one?

funny how soon we forgot how bad vhs looked :-)

Are you therefore suggesting that nothing can be done? And walk away?

not at all. just that we all seem to expect better than what we get under certain circumstances.

Thank You everyone. The part of the video I screen captured is just a photoshop created image that I used as an intro slide to the video. I would assume that the image should stay sharper and clearer than the converted video. The lettering is also part of the image not a text media.

I shoot with a Sony NEX FS100 and Canon 1DX. When imported into Vegas it ask if I want to set the project settings to match and I always say YES. Based on this, looking at the project settings it sets the project to interlaced. But when I, right-click > properties, on the media it looks like the source is progressive. Does that mean Vegas chose the wrong project settings?

Here is one I did last year and it looks better. As far as I know I used all the same equipment and all the same settings. Well, Just looked I think the only difference was the project settings was set to progressive. Would that matter? I thought project settings just dictated how the playback preview is affected not the end Render.

- To address other comments, I tried rendering with and without the adjust media tickbox, no difference.

- I have have not tried interpolate instead of blend fields, I will try that now.

To get rid of 'black pillars' on both sides when downconverting from HD to DVD resolution, I turned on this option:

"Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)

I thought the consensus on DVD from Vegas/DVDA was to use the DVDA template but adjust the bitrate & put the quality slider all the way to the highest setting. :?

I also seem to remember being told on the forum that interlaces is for motion, not still, so text will look bad almost all the time. Not 100%, but 95%.

I also used to do 1440x1080i (HDV 1080i video) to 480i DVD and it would look awesome. Maybe it was just the footage I filmed.

funny how soon we forgot how bad vhs looked :-)

I remember working at a TV station with DVCPro recording. Putting DVCPro to VHS looks incredible vs camcorder VHS. As good as a VHS with a film on it.

I've found the best quality option is to let DVDA do the encode, as the vegas downconversions often came out pixelated looking, almost as if they had been rendered at a sub-SD resolution. So, since I already have to make a Blu-Ray encode as well with most of the packages I offer, I just do one Blu-Ray AVC encode in Vegas and then set DVDA to DVD and let it do the downconversion. It may not be the best option (DVDA's encoder is SLOOOOOW), but it's worked well for me.

It may not be the best option ...

It, basically, is.

I've never found dvda encoding better then Vegas, just slower (no multicore/cpu support).

Only in the case of downsampling from HD did I ever notice a difference.

Another old spouse's tale is that if you want good SD then shoot SD.

After many years of HD, I recently made my first DVD from HD and also was disappointed with the quality. So I displayed an HD frame with lots of sharp detail (fence with rails) on my monitor and shot it with my HDV camera in SD mode. The colour was too saturated and shifted a bit, which is not relevant here, but the sharpness was about the same as my rendering. (I rendered to HD 50p lossless intermediate and re-rendered to SD 50i.)

funny how soon we forgot how bad vhs looked :-)

I remember working at a TV station with DVCPro recording. Putting DVCPro to VHS looks incredible vs camcorder VHS. As good as a VHS with a film on it.

back then we used to mass dup from betacam and betacam sp. like your experience, tapes professionally produced looked good - what i was referring to was home grown, either shooting vhs or editing it - either way, one generation vhs > vhs was, well, you know....

I have been experimenting with Vegas Pro 13 and 9c.

I rendered directly from a high definition 50i source to DVD Architect PAL widescreen template 720x576. (I haven't checked whether the conclusions also apply to NTSC.)

1) The results with deinterlace method set to interpolate or blend were identical!

2) The results with Lower Field First and Upper Field First were not identical, but the differences were very difficult to detect and in my opinion were negligible.

3) A render from CyberLink PowerDirector gave similar sharpness but the colours were slightly different and produced no black bars each side. (I understand Sony Creative Software is technically correct regarding the aspect ratio, but their pedantry sure creates an unnecessary pain in the you know what!)

4) Rendering 50i HD to a 50p HD lossless intermediate gave a surprising result. With deinterlace method set to blend, each alternate frame was blurred! The deinterlace method should therefore be set to interpolate.

5) rendering the 50p HD to 50i SD, as above, gave slightly different results with regard to LLF and UFF, but the differences were negligible. The differences with respect to the directly rendered results were also small and negligible, so there is no advantaging in rendering interlaced HD to interlaced SD in two stages.

Conclusion: Rendering HD interlaced to SD interlaced in Vegas gives quality about as good as you can get without jumping through hoops.

3) ... produced no black bars each side ...

To prevent this, I usually turned on 'Stretch video to fill output frame size'

Long time ago,I made once a DVD from HDV footage with Vegas. Activating the Reduce Interlace Flicker filter for all HDV events, gave to my opinion a better picture quality, than without Reduce Interlace Flicker filter (Vegas standard setting)

Was it interlace flicker only that was improved? This can happen with sharp horizontal edges, in which case slight vertical blurring before down-sampling should help.