My Studio WMV HD 5.1 seems to carry the VC-1 codec anyway. I am not sure if this was because I had WMV11 installed before I loaded studio or it came with it. Pinnacle's WMV profile names will always pick up the latest WMV codec installed on your machine, even if the profile name looks old.
Why not make your own profiles, rather than relying on Studio's?
Assuming you have Windows Media Player 11 installed and working correctly, then you could download Windows Media Encoder 9 series from here. Once installed, run the utility "Windows Media ProfileEditor" and
1. Name your profile and give it a brief description
2. Tick Audio, choose CBR and codec 'Windows media audio 9.2"
3. Tick Video, choose CBR and codec "Windows media 9 advanced profile"
4. Skip over the bitrate box
5 Choose NTSC or PAL
6. Choose Allow Interlace and Allow non Square (as required). I don't bother with either.
8. Go back to the bitrate box and ADD a bitrate: say 7000K (don't forget the 'K')
This should now bring up another tab..
9. Set audio to 192kpbs, 48KHZ, Stereo CBR
10. Video size 1920 x 1080 (or whatever you require). Untick 'Same as video in' box
11. Frame Rate 25fps (PAL) or 29.97fps (NTSC)
12. Buffer 5
13. Video Smoothness 85%
14. SAVE AND CLOSE your profile onto you disk, where you can find it again,
Now find the profile on the disk and copy it to the directory: C:/Program files/pinnacle/Studio 12/WMVProfiles11/
Close and re-open Pinnacle Studio.
Now, go to Studio's MAKE FILE tab and choose 'Windows Media'.
Your own profile should now be listed amongst all other WMV Profiles. The higher the bitrate, the better the quality but the higher the file size. Just experiment with CBR, VBR (peak) until you get the Quality you want.
I haven't tried 2-pass as I didn't know you could do that in WMV9 Advanced? Mind you, I've not used Expression as I don't fancy SILVERLIGHT or NET framework hugging all my resources.