Rendering to WMV 11? Good? Better? Best?

[xstein]

I recently rendered a sports highlight film captured with a Canon Vixia HV30 in WMV 11 format. It seems to me that it looks better than MPeg2 at least. Obviously, going from the computer and being burned to a DVD I lose a lot of clarity. What is the best format or way to put HQ or HD quality rendering on a DVD? I record football games for coaches to use to break down game film. I am trying to find the best visual quality possible to put on DVD for them. I am using Sony Vegas 8.
Thanks

[guns1inger]

For DVD you have little choice. If you want quality, it is mpeg-2. While it will not be HD quality, if you do it correctly, and keep the running time down to 60 - 70 minutes, and the bitrate up in the low 9000's and you should get good quality.

[poisondeathray]

Don't render to WMV, then to DVD-Video; you have an redundant step of quality loss. Go straight to DVD compliant MPEG2, then author your DVD

I'm assuming this is being viewed on a "standard" DVD player? not a PC / PS3 / blu-ray /etc.. ? If it's the latter, you can keep HD quality/resolution and still use cheap DVD5/9 media by using AVCHD format instead of "DVD-Video"

[xstein]

Thanks for the replies. Yes this will be played on a standard DVD player. When I go to render using Sony Vegas 8 are there any settings I need to change or just keep the defaults of DVD NTSC at 720 x 480? I did notice a drop down box to move it from 4:3 to 16:9.
As far as the BPS they had a Constant BPS check box or an Auto Fit box which was already checked. Not to sure what to do there...

[guns1inger]

Set your project to 16:9 before you load the footage onto the timeline, and expert as 16:9. Assuming you have the Pro version, when you click on File->Render and select mpeg-2 for output, you can click on the Custom button, and adjust your bitrates. The defaults are pretty low and mediocre.