How to combine multiple clips with different field orders in Vegas

[virguloso]

I'm using Sony Vegas, and I need to combine a number of small clips (commercials) into one movie file. However, I'm not sure how to handle the fact that they have different field orders. Obviously I have to pick one field order for this new file, but some of the clips are progressive, some are lower field first, and some are upper field first. Whatever field order I choose, some of the clips are going to look wrong.

How do I handle this?

[jagabo]

Reverse the field order of all the bff clips to make them tff (I think Vegas does this automatically to match the output field order). Then encode tff. Or vice versa. The progressive clips don't need any change.

[virguloso]

Thanks jagabo!

What do you recommend to do this without losing too much? In Vegas this is out of question.

[jagabo]

Are you saying you lose too much quality doing this in Vegas? I would use AviSynth then encode to either a losslessly compressed AVI or the final output format with an appropriate encoder. HcGUI for MPEG 2, x264 for h.264, etc.