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I am planning a long ((one hour?) project that ultimately will be composed mainly of four types of media: (1) taped sd digital video 4:3, (2)AVCHD HD video 16:9, (3) personal photos and downloaded images, very few of which are larger than 1000x750* (4) a few very short videos downloaded from Youtube.
My final DVD is expected to be 16:9 digital.
From past experience, it seems the way to keep PE7 stable with larger projects is to make segmented mini-projects and then join them together later for the final project. So the question is: should each mini-project be created in a format closest to itself, or in a format closest to the final long project? For example, when I initially load the AVCHD clips into PE7, should I start off with a project settings for AVCHD, or should I use the setting that will be that of my final project (sd widescreen)? Another example: Should I use 4:3 settings for the sd tape initial mini-project, or should I use settings of the final joined project--which, as stated, is expected to be DVD widescreen? Same Q for photos and Youtube downloads vs final output.
. I am concerned both with avoiding program crashes and ultimate image distortion, aiming, of course, for the best image on DVD possible. Any specific suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I currently have PE7 loaded onto a Win 7, 64 bit Sony laptop with an i7 processor and 8 GB RAM and I GB graphics card

*Most of the photos are sized at 855x640, as was suggested by Steve in a previous post.

Hi Simon,
I would keep everything in the format for the media, not the final project.
You can export as SD widescreen later, even from the AVCHD project, and it will look fine.
You do want to make sure that you are using widescreen 16:9 SD projects for the SD material, AVCHD HD is already widescreen so nothing to worry about there.

When you have all of your parts ready you can export them all as AVI Widescreen and them import them all into a SD Widescreen project for final touches.

That's my usual process and I work with a lot of mixed footage just like you have and the final output is to a SD Widescreen DVD. Good luck on your project

I understand everything you suggested, except for one point. You said I should work with each type of media in a format closest to its original self and then export it to an SD 16:9 widescreen project, which is my target format. But you also said I should create initial SD projects in 16:9 as well. I have a lot of 4:3 SD tapes. Are you saying it would be better to start off these in SD 16:9, or better in SD 4:3, and then export to the final SD widescreen format?

I would import the SD 4:3 footage into a SD 16:9 project so you can see what it will look like.
You will also be able to scale the images up so they will fill the widescreen frame if you want to.
You can try this with "scale to frame size" on and off to see which way works best for you.