In the past I've tried authoring some of my other videos onto DVD and no matter what software I tried and how I tried to do it it chopped off the 'safe area' edges, which for those videos was a critical issue as they were text driven and the text had all the edges trimmed.

I decided it must have been an issue with how I rendered it, aside from catering all of the entire timeline events to fit into the safe areas. Well when you have a video project that has literally hundreds upon hundreds of events the notion of adjusting each into the safe areas is absurd.

So now I'm on the verge of releasing a time sensitive documentary film, and when I do over the next day or 2 I'd like to be able to put it straight onto DVD.

I edit with Sony Vegas 7, and have the DVD Architect package, but Architect was one of the programs I had major problems with.

Right now I'm rendering what should be a release worthy cut. I'm hoping that I can just convert this huge 'raw' (22GB) file however I may need it because converting takes 1/3 of the time as rendering it straight NTSC DV. Its rendering as "NTSC DV" (Best; Pregressive; NoInterlace) standard 720x480 resolution which is basically how my older videos were done (but interlaced). I realize my choice of noInterlace with this current render could have implications, but I'm unsure of what extent as far as a TV is concerned (doesnt the TV do the actual interlacing?).
I've been converting things lately with mostly success using "Total Video Convertor" which has many conversion codec options.

SO I'm not sure if my folly has been in the rendering or just how I'm deploying the authoring software attempts. If I have to somehow partially 'letterbox' the entire film I dont know how to do all that.