I have Sony Vegas and will need to start encoding to H.264 format for downloadable video products. I know Sony Vegas can encode from the timeline to this format, but I also am aware of other encoders available for purchase. Does it benefit me in any way to use a different encoder than the one Vegas uses? If so, which would you suggest and why? My starting format will be AVCHD 1920x1080 and probably scale down to 1280x720. Thanks!

If you are authoring blu-ray disks using DVD Architect stick with the built-in encoder because many external encoders are not compatible with DVD Architect. If you want to squeeze more video onto a DVD, then an external encoder such as x264 can give noticeably better quality. In this case you will need a different program to author the DVD, because the files produced by x264 are not compatible with DVD Architect.

Hi Eric, thanks for the reply, however, I was not asking about blu-ray or DVD. I am encoding for downloadable video files (not streaming)..In another forum, I was referred to this video:

Sony Vegas to Youtube Tutorial - A Better Method - YouTube

Seems people like a program called Handbrake so I'm looking into that now...

Once you try Handbrake you will never encode to mp4 in Vegas again, visual quality for bit rate/file size is outstanding.