QUALITY TIPS
Here are a few basic tips for improving quality:
Work Uncompressed - From start to finish, do not compress anything with codecs, only compress the FINAL render from Vegas/Premier/Whatever your main editting program is. For instance, lets say you use startmovie 90 to make your individual clips, render it from VideoMach UNCOMPRESSED and import it to your video editting program, make your whole movie and only when it is entirely complete, render it with a codec to minimize quality loss.
Dont Change Resolutions - From start to finish, always use the same resolution. If you plan on your final video being 800x600 (which I suggest), then make sure CS is on 800x600 when you render your bmps/avi, make your clips 800x600 and make your final render 800x600 to minimize quality loss (changing the resolution somewhere will greatly reduce quality).
Use Black - Generally speaking, you want to keep your movie between 25-3mb/min (even lower is better) so its not ridiculously large (and csflicks wont take past 25mb/min). Using more black in a movie greatly helps this (black acts as nothing in your movie, nothing to compress, just blank, so its less file information). Doing things like having a black border widescreen will help as will having black backgrounds for things like credits. The less file information, the higher bitrate you can compress your video with and still stay within mb/min limits therefore having a better quality movie.