[Mike Kujbida]

+1 for the Bella keyboard.
Vegas users love their Contour Design ShuttlePRO.
https://retail.contourdesign.com/?/products/23

[Mike Kujbida]

First of all, you’re taking almost a 3X quality hit but going from 1280 x 720 down to 720 x 480 🙁
Then you’re converting your pristine footage to MPEG-2 which is another quality hit.
The only way to maximize quality is to do all your renders at a CBR of 8,000,000. Some folks say that you can get away with 8,500,000 but I prefer the lower number.
At that bit rate (8M), you can only get 1 hr. 11 min. on a DVD (using Marks calculator with the safety margin set to 5%).

[Mike Kujbida]

[Paul Gregory] ” Is there some way I could have turned this feature off?”

Only certain formats allow this feature and only under very specific circumstances.
Here’s a page from the Pro 10 manual outlining this.

[Mike Kujbida]

You can copy and paste tracks from project to project all day and night long. What you can’t do is copy Track Motion keyframes.

[Mike Kujbida]

The mixer level (it really should be called master level) should always be set to 0.
If your levels are low, then the problem and subsequent cure lie elsewhere.

[Mike Kujbida]

[Joao Souza] “I see, so you replied only to say you did it but you don’t say how?”

You asked if you could do a copy/paste. The answer is yes and that’s how it’s done.

BTW, Track Motion keyframes will not copy to a new track.

[Mike Kujbida]

Roger, have you tried using the lightning bolt to get rid of all unused media?

[Mike Kujbida]

If you have Vegas Pro, use a Velocity envelope to instantly freeze the video at the desired point.
Make the freeze as long as necessary and then resume it at the appropriate time.

[Mike Kujbida]

Glad to help Ed.
Once you get used to working this way, you’ll wonder why you didn’t always do it 🙂

[Mike Kujbida]

It’s been suggested before so I’ll suggest it again.
Render using the appropriate MainConcept AVC template template and change the extension from .mp4 to .mov
Use the 1920×1080 @ 30p template.
Customize it to interlaced if that’s a requirement.
Odds are that no one will notice the difference.
I’ve done it before and no one said anything 🙂