I'm trying to find the best encoder to convert to HDV for HD-DVD / Blueray and also IO-DATA (JVC) Player.

In the past, my projects involved converting HD to SD for DVD.
I've frame served from Sony Vegas directly to Procoder 2 with decent results.

When rendering HDV m2t files straight from Vegas, the quality is not so good.
Also, when frame serving directly to Procoder 2, the quality is also not great.
I'm seeing some color banding on gradients, color shifts, and some softening.
I've tried rendering with the HIGHEST quality settings

Note, my project is using 1280x720 23.976P (JVC HD100) HDV files converted to NEO Cineform. Also, if I render out cineform from my timeline, the picture quality is excellent. Maybe I'm expecting to much from exporting back to HDV.

Any suggestions on where I'm going wrong here? The color banding and color shift are not acceptable. The render HD video (m2t, wmv etc..) is darker than cineform rendered?

Not exactly sure what HD-DVD format you're trying to encode to. Windows Media WMV works quite well and you can go straight to WMV from within vegas.

Not exactly sure what HD-DVD format you're trying to encode to. Windows Media WMV works quite well and you can go straight to WMV from within vegas.

Bill, not from my version of Vegas as compared to rendering files directly using Windows Media 9 Encoder program.

There's a thread on this issue here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=100102

Problem fixed. Re-installed Vegas 6. I'm not sure what happened.