Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn

This isn't exclusively a Vegas question per se. The Sony FX-7 shoots HDV, which is mpeg-2. So you can edit mpeg-2 natively in Sony Vegas I believe. The footage will be 1440 x 1080i, with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.33. You will need to de-interlace the footage somewhere along the line. I do it upon capture in Premiere Pro. I edit, add effects, and then always output a full size MPEG-2 or AVI file, from my timeline. You will need to crop the edges to convert the original HDV 16x9 footage to 4x3 if you are making a standard DVD. (not Blue Ray) Then bring that edited 4x3 movie into the DVD authoring app and let that app transcode into the final format and then create the menus & navigation etc. That's one workflow, but there are a number of ways one could get this job done that lead to more or less the same result.