How to make Vegas work .. with EXTREME CLARITY (hd1080p)

[GullyJewelz]

Is there anyone who can help me with the settings in Vegas Pro 9 to edit music videos and render them for the best quality possible?
I have a sony hdr cx110 and my friend has a nikon dslr . .
I can't seem to get the video to look as clear as other people shooting and rendering in 480p and I have been working (presumably) in 1080p on both of these cameras.

I have a dual core laptop, pentium with 1.73 ghz
2 gigs ram, 32bit windows vista home edition laptop
*I was told that the 1.73 ghz is per processor so it should be fast enough to render in 1080p but when i try it.. vegas freezes or error messages me that i need at least 3.0 ghz to continue ..
So I have been rendering in lower settings (480p) and it renders fine, but the hd quality really just ISN'T THERE ...

Please assist..

[David Jimerson]

Well, 480p isn't HD.

But to help, it would be useful if you posted screen shots of what you have and describe what's wrong with it.

[kylevant]

Are you editing the footage natively or are you using an intermediate?

[HotConductor]

Why would you render 480p? If you are shooting, editing, and rendering in HD, then you should have that same dimension all the way down the line. Your project settings (file>projects) need to be correct. Make sure it matches your footage. An easy way to do this is to click the film-reel-arrow-folder-icon-thingie, which is on the far right of the top row in project properties under the video tab. Long run-on sentence but this is the way to do it right. You then select a clip from your footage, and Vegas will adjust all the settings to conform to your video.

Once you have your project correct, then you just need to edit it correctly and render correctly. For web I always use these settings:

Type: Sony AVC
Template: a custom one I made for 1080p 24fps HD video
Frame size: 1920x1080 (or whatever your format is)
Profile: Main
Entropy coding: CABAC
Frame rate: 23.976 (or whatever your format is, or preference)
Field order: progressive
pixel aspect: 1.0
bitrate: 15,000,000 (This is overkill. You can always dumb it down if you need to fit the file to a certain MB/GB limit.)
Encode mode: automatic

Under the audio tab I specify AAC, 48,000 Hz, 192,000 bitrate, stereo.

Bam. Thats how you do it.

[GullyJewelz]

I am embarrased to have taken so long to say thanks to everyone who took the time to provide assistance. But I do thank you all for the assistance. Believe it or not, I actually came right back to this post after all this time, to see what I need to do before I embark upon my journey of video editing (again).