nope this is not working. i am still confused. as far as letting the dvd author scale it to 16:9 it does not work. when i add the 3:2 clip into vegas and render out to mpg2 on a 16:9 ntsc template its still going to show the black bars. in vegas i can go to project properties there is a setting there called pixel aspect ratio. if i change that to 0.9091(dv ntsc). it almost works but there is still about 1/8 inch of black on the sides. i dont think this is what needs to be done. it should be showing no black on the sides before i put it in vegas. so i will now try ash,s suggestion of 854x480.