What would look best ?
 

I have some High Def PAL footage (1080i) which i need to author into an NTSC DVD.. I have a sony FX1 that i am capturing from and im using Vegas 7 to edit... I have so far captured with the down convert function in the FX1 to make the 1080i footage normal PAL DV when its captured.. This has worked ok, but im wondering would it be better to capture the footage as 1080i PAL and let Vegas do the converting to standard def NTSC ?

It would seem better in theory because vegas would have the higher res 1080 footage to transcode over to NTSC with, but im wondering if (in practise) it would make any significant difference ?

Capturing HDV and editing HD files in Vegas gives FAR superior std def PAL DVD's for me (much, much sharper) than allowing the camera to downconvert so that you capture and edit SD files. The best approach is to keep HD as far down the chain as you can.

Although I've not done the NTSC conversion on DVD making I would tend to agree with you that this should be the way to get the best result. It certainly works well for all the other format changes I try (WMV, MPEG4 etc.)

Capture in 1080 i. Let Vegas do the conversion to NTSC for DVDA2. That is the best way. I have compared the differences. That way u also have the flexibility to convert the high res HDV mpeg to PAL anytime u wan it.

Ive done lots of work from DV files to NTSC and PAL DVDs in the past.. This is my first chance at using HDV footage as the source.. Im just running some tests now and it seemed like i had a flicker issue with my renders to NTSC from 1080i PAL HDV.. So i did a quick search and im seeing High Def field order is upper first, i guess that will make a difference!!!

Does anyone have any suggestions for my NTSC render settings from the 1080i footage ? Im guessing i set upper field first in the file on the timeline, then if i used progressive scan in the render and interpolate as the deinterlace method would that produce good results ?