Check these:
1) in vms, right-click on the preview window and make sure that 'simulate aspect ratio' is active
2) for the rendered file: some media players (vlc medialan is a good one, 'zoom' also) have several aspect ratio settings, so go through them until you're satisfied. Windows media player is problematic on my system as well, so I don' t use it.
3) In the 'render as' screen, keep an eye on the settings, also keep in mind that there are many different settings. If you do NOT tick off the setting 'stretch video to fill output (do not letterbox)', aspect ratio should be ok, even on wmp.

If the movies (mpeg2 video) that come from your cam are definitely 16:9 and VMS is possibly reading them as 4:3 this is easy to correct.
After you drag the media (mpeg2 video files) into the Project Media Bin.
Right-Click on the media and select "Properties", you can re-assign (or check) the properties of the video with this feature. If I insert a movie I know is 16:9 and VMS is reading it as 4:3 then just use this feature to change the PAR to 1.2121 (or 1.3333 for HDV Video). You can also re-assign the fielding of the video.
The properties screen of the source videos in the Project Media Bin will display how VMS reads the video, great feature with VMS is you can change these parameters. I don't know of many other programs where this is possible to change the properties of how a program reads the video, great feature.

I do remember back when sony first made these cams and some programs were having a problem reading the aspect ratio, something related to how the cam was assigning the 16:9 AR to the file. In other programs it's hard to correct this, in VMS this is simple.

So in VMS simply right-click on one of the source videos in the media bin and select properties. If the PAR is 1.2121 they are 16:9. Make sure when you export to a mpeg2 video file that WideScreen is selected as one of the templates, otherwise VMS will change your 16:9 video to 4:3 which may have already happened to you. I'm pretty sure the default DVD Ntsc Template is 4:3 Aspect Ratio so make sure the template says WideScreen.

I'm only guessing but going by your original post it sounds like you used the standard DVD template which then does create a 4:3 video. You can check this by putting that rendered file back into the Project Media Bin and again right-click | Properties and check the PAR assigned to the video.

I think that creating a 16:9 Program Stream file using VMS is somewhat tricky because most of the widescreen templates want to create elementary streams (separate video & audio files) for using in DVDA Studio 4.5, but make sure the words widescreen is in one of the templates your using to export to a new video file.
This has been my experience using VMS, hope it helps.

Looks like I still need help.

I put one of the videos in the Meda Bin and right-clicked on it and got this info:
Attributes: 720x480x32
Format: MPEG-2
Frame rate: 29.970 (NTSC) {greyed out}
Field order: Upper field first
Pixel aspect ratio: 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen)
Alpha channel: None

So from the post from 4eyes, it appears that the video has the correct settings before I drag it up to the project.

I then drag it to the time line and it splits the video and 5.1 audio into the different rows. At this point I have not changed any settings or options, mostly because I do not know which ones are causing me problems.

Now I click Make Movie. No editing, I'm just trying to make sure what I need to set so it creates the widescreen video. So I select "Save it to your hard drive" and click Next.

This is where I am confused.

The Make Movie - Render Settings dialog has many options. From what everyone is telling me, I need to use the Widescreen template to create the movie. When I look for this template, I can only see this when I select MainConcept MPEG-2 (*.mpg) as my Format and my only option in Templates is "DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream". Ok, but then I lose my audio tracks? How do I preserve my audio?

If I select Video for Windows (AVI) as my Format, I see the Template "NTSC Dv Widescreen" but it is only stereo...

So I guess I'm still confused and appreciate any more suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

john

Normally, you then render your audio separately, choosing the right template to preserve 5.1 (this only takes some minutes)
Next you go to DVDArchitect, where you add the video file, and combine it with the audio file. Next you burn the dvd. Finished.

ProRauder,
As far as I can tell, you can't export a to PS mpeg2 video file with video & audio as widescreen.
They need to be exported as ES (elementary streams), 1 video file & 1 audio file.

I'm pretty sure if you want to make a dv file of the project in widescreen with 5.1 audio you can change the audio in the DV-type2 file and select 5 or 6 channel audio (saved as a wav file(s)).
Then you use this dv-type2 file in DVD Architech studio.
When you create the elementary streams (for widescreen) you assign the same name to both the video & audio files when you export them in VMS. Then in DVD Architech Studio when you insert the video file DVDA will automatically assign the same audio file to the project that has the same name.

OR, just load the VMS project file into DVD Architech Studio.

If you want to be tricky to just get the mpeg2 file then load the project into DVDA. Do not create any chapters, create a dvd folder system on the harddisk. Open up VMS and use the import from dvd feature. This will extract the mpeg2 video file back to your harddisk. The nice thing about letting DVDA encode your video you can manually set higher bit-rates other than the default bit-rate for higher quality video.