Can you turn your camcorder VERTICAL and shoot in a 16:9 aspect ratio and then render it out like that?

I tried it and cant seem to make it work, but a coworker claims he is able to do it...We both are using Canon HF200 but I use Sony Vegas and he has Power Director by Sonic...

Open up the Project Properties window and set your Output Rotation as desired.
Choices are 0° (original), 90° CW, 180° (inverted) and 90° CCW.
Remember to rotate your source video accordingly (-90°) using Pan/Crop as Vegas doesn't automatically do this for you.

so i have set my project properties to rotate 90 i have used pan and zoom to turn the video -90 all i get is a hole big area of letterboxing surrounding the video...I must have something screwed up in the settings

Of course, it only makes sense, think about it. On a normal TV that is what you would end up with because of the shape of a TV.

On the other hand, doesn't vegas have a feature that allows formatting for vertical screens, such as the ones you see in the mall and in stores, and in banks? I thought that was a feature introduced in 8 or 9.

I did a quick check but cannot find any presets for it.

Jeff, the Output Rotation preset I mentioned is what you're looking for.
This feature was introduced in Pro 8.
The online help menu has the details for it under "Digital Signage".
As you said, you need to shoot with this rotated format in mind.

Duh, I read your post, but didn't really try it out, sorry! Thanks Mike. That is a wonderful feature.

Here's a screen shot from some playing around with this feature and shooting video with a camera that was rotated on purpose.

Thanks for the sample Mike. Lots of potential with that feature.

Mike... How much for the CRT monitor in the pic? HA HA...

Hey im not doin so well here...

David, if you're talking about the one on the top shelf, it's a priceless antique :)
To wit, a Commodore 2080, the only high persistence video/computer monitor for its time.

The one in the middle is a Tektronix 650, in its day a state-of-the-art broadcast colour monitor.

I really need to an office clean out one of these years.