Post using Vegas Pro 8!

[Guile Branco]

Hey there, I have been editing a feature documentary using Vegas 8.0, and like many, I am concerned about the quality of my final product. I have lots of questions and I appreciate your time.

How to make sure I achieve the best picture quality using Vegas (when rendering) for both plans below - and would "cineform" be necessary? :
This is my plan: make a DVD available for festival submission, then take the footage to a post house for an HDCAM upconversion. Do I need to take an AVI uncompressed in a hard drive to the post house - or a MOV?
Now, the footage was shot using a DVX100 and Canon XHL1 and I know it won't be as great as HD - I have been editing using a 24p i template, its going to be 120 min long and it looks beautiful on my desktop.

All my DVX footage is 4:3 and all my Canon footage is anamorphic - any ideas to make it all look good and even using Vegas? Is it better to have it widescreen 16:9 for the final product and is simply cropping the best alternative? And lastly, should I also have a final product in 4:3 for television purposes, or is it just a waste of time. (I know this is probably when the quality is the best before cropping)

Oh yeah and yet another question (last!) - should I strive for a film look? I saw this website:
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/tu...s/filmlook.htm
but I am afraid of screwing everything and losing quality and stuff, what do you think?

THANKS!!!!!

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Lots of questions, no doubt. If you shot SD (your post suggests so) then you'll be wanting the post house to use Terranex or Topaz to upsample/crop/letterbox your SD to HD, and then print to HDCAM. You must have $$$$, yes?
Start with a 4:2:2 YUV file from the Vegas timeline.
Start with widescreen, make your project widescreen. Or...you can just hire one of our guys to project manage it and you'll be sure to spend no extra money, you'll save money and have terrific, hassle free production/edits. :-)

[Ian Stark]

Appreciate this isn't a Vegas question, but it is related to the theme of this thread - anyone got any thoughts on using InstantHD Pro from Red Giant?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Instant HD is a very good software as well. I haven't used it for a while, no particular reason not to...but it is slow. Topaz isn't fast either. Quality-wise, they're close. It would be sensible to take the same piece of footage and render em' both out to test for time.

[Ian Stark]

Thanks Spot. Actually, I just realised I have been invited onto the beta program so I can check this out myself!! I'll report back to the Comp'ing forum.