I don't know if anyone here is helped by this, but since I used Vegas to assemble the final product and Vegas' Mpeg2 rendering engine is kind of crap, I wanted to use an external encoder like HCenc. If any of you have tried that, you know it's a bit complicated, with having to write scripts and stuff to make it work.
Well, I was recommended to a program called "The FilmMachine" Basically, it does all of that for you. It's very simple, and makes the process so much easier. The results look about three times better than they would if I had rendered the mpeg2 in Vegas. I'm kind of technology retarded, and I could figure it out, which also means most medium to large sized mammals could too. Recommended!