[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Any current laptop will run Vegas 6 just fine. DuoCore/Dual cores is best of course…
Blu-ray burning won’t matter if you’re using Vegas 6, and I assume you’re using CineForm Neo to conform the HDV files to be useable in Vegas?
Your relatives likely can’t play HD DVDs in their players, unless they’ve got Blu-ray players.
All newer DVD burners can burn Dual Layer/DL discs, and all current DVD players should be able to play DL discs.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

All of the world excepting the US, Canada, and Japan, uses PAL. There are a few obscure and small geographic regions using NTSC, and there are even fewer obscure regions that use a variant of either, such as SECAM, DMac, and HiVision.
It’s much better with digital formats, but there are still variants.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Congrats, Jerry!!! I know you’ve been working on this for a while, and having seen some of the work in the film, I’m sure it’s great.

Rendering to a Cineform master is a good plan. Rendering to DVD in DVD Architect isn’t.
I’m happy to work with you a bit, in private mail or otherwise, but for the moment, lemme say that you’ll do best taking your CineForm master and creating your DVD from that master.
Put the exact length of the DVD into a bitrate calc, and figure out the best bitrate from there. CBR if you can, and VBR if you can’t. I’d use VBR two-pass if you’ve got a high blend of static and action shots.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

If the pictures/graphics are very large, you might want to consider reducing them to not more than 2Kpixels in either dimension.

Set Dynamic Preview higher than it normally might be set.
Keep Preview at Preview/Auto, or smaller.

This *should* help

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

for me, working with the Mackie Control is a given/necessity for long form. For you…it may not be, but I find it incredibly useful.
The shuttle/controls are identical to the Shuttle Pro, and you can set it up differently if you wish.

You can even use the MCU for color correction if you wish!

As far as alternatives, anything that supports the HUI protocol will work, such as the M-Audio Oxygen keyboard, etc. There is also the Frontier Tranzport, whose settings are already within Vegas.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Rendering from the master timeline is the smart way to go, good that you’ve got it available.
you need to find out from your client what bitrates they’d like. Usually a 100k and a 512 stream suffice, but they might have different wishes.
Is it going to end up on a YouTube or UGC site? If so, beginning with a high quality MPEG 4 is your best option.
As far as delivery you can:
~email
~thumbdrive/sneakernet
~FTP
~put on your own website for them to download
~mail DVD

You really need more info from your client about bitrate, final file size, and other wishes they may have. Length? Folks *generally* don’t like long files on the web unless it’s feature content, so you may need to have a discussion about breaking the media up into chunks, depending on the length.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Interesting…you used the same point to make two different arguments, neither of which are valid.

Varicam has not been chosen for 720p. It’s erroneous to think so. At the time, CineGamma was the only film-like option on a budget. Camcorder manufacturers have been chasing that look for a long, long time before and after 720p was created. These days, more and more commercials are being produced with XDCAM and similar, and while the market isn’t becoming any larger, the number of image acquisition choices is significantly more broad. 99.9% of what will be shot with RED, SI2K, etc will never see celluloid. You’re still suggesting that people are buying those cameras…why? If 720p is the grail, why has Panasonic moved into the 1080 market? Why are we seeing development of 4K cameras and beyond?
No one “chooses 720p because it is more film-like.” It isn’t any more film-like than 480, 1080, 2k, or 4k.
The first part of your argument stems around the “big screen.” Then the point of debate shifts to “will never be transferred to film.” I’m not sure you believe your own points, perhaps you’re arguing for the sake of argument, so like Rick, I’ll bow out of this discussion.
But you continue to believe whatever you wish to believe. As Rick and I have attempted to point out, “film-like” and “resolution” aren’t part of the same discussion, not really.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

There are only two options, and both of them result in losing portions of your image. One way or another, you’re going to lose screen, if you don’t want letterboxing.
1-Crop the image from wide to 4:3 aspect ratio. This will result in the least amount of resolution, but a full third of your screen is going to disappear, so hopefully you framed for television.
2-Pan/scan. You’ll still crop as above, but will follow the action using pan/crop to keep the action centered.

You could of course, use Track Motion to fit it all in, but then your images will be squeezed.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Generated Media, Bezier masks, soft edges, high transparency.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

There shouldn’t be any debate; record at 48K because you are matching video. Vegas will handle the 44.1 if you want it to of course, but why mess with unmatched sample rates?