Similar answer to Steven's. Specifically for me, I supply my clients with a PAL DV version in AVI so that they can convert it to whatever format they wish without having to come back to me to do it (some can do it themselves, some want their web designers to do it, and to be honest I have more lucrative things I can be doing rather than format conversions!).

And also to echo Steven's coment - this SHOULD work! i should be able to render to avi then drop that avi into DVDA5 without problems. Seems like some people can, and I'd like to join them!

[QUOTE=Jeff Harper;995230]I submit that yes, technically DVDA should compress avi files for you, but I have never trusted DVDA for that job because there is no way to know what settings it uses to compress.

As suggested, by rendering avi files first with Vegas using the appropriate mpeg 2 template there would be no issue. You can still store your files any way you choose, just render with Vegas first and if you do not need to save the resulting Mpeg 2 files just delete them. QUOTE]

In my case I'm not so worried about the quality of the DVD in that a) I only make DVD's on rare occasions and b) it's done as a freebie for a couple of clients who like to have a version they can watch on a TV - I go to great lengths to explain to them that the video is (usually) designed to be seen in a browser and is framed, colour corrected, etc, accordingly and will not look great on a TV, but I think they just want something to show the wife and kids!

So, my primary requirement is an avi. What I should be able to do is NOT have to go through a second render from Vegas. I should be able to drop the avi into DVDA5 and let it do the work.

The fact that it works OK in previous versions suggests that we shouldn't be having this problem and either there is a conflict on my (and Steven's) system or there is something we are doing differently to everyone else or there is something wrong with DVDA5 that manifests itself in certain situations.

The fact is, it isn't right and I want to sort the problem out rather than have to compromise.

But thanks for the ideas, folks!

Interesting suggestion.

In fact, you can clearly see when previewing in DVDA that it ain't right.

If I burn a DVD it flashes horribly on a TV screen and if I play that DVD in a PC it doesn't actually flash so much as look like someone has thrown a gallon of paint on it! Strange.

EDIT: Actually I have just test rendered to a directory (without burning a DVD) and it does flicker badly even on a computer screen.

FURTHER EDIT: Interestingly I have just noticed that the problem is also noticeable when you preview in DVDA5. Hadn't spotted that before.

You are allowing a procedural issue to hang you up and waste your time. Vegas renders to mpeg 2 as fast or faster I believe.

Sorry to disagree Jeff, but the fact remains that there is something wrong and it should be sorted, either by me doing something differently, or by a problem in DVDA5 being corrected.

It worked fine before (in previous versions) and I paid for an upgrade that did not state anywhere would no longer work with avi files or that I would have to change the way I do things.

To be honest, I burn DVD's so rarely that I'm not particularly concerned about having to render again in Vegas (even though I installed DVDA on a separate machine purely so I wouldn't have to lose Vegas every time I wanted to burn a DVD - but that's a different argument).

Yes, I entirely agree that it could (and maybe should) be done in Vegas, but that's not really the point. The point is that something is broken and needs to be fixed (my avi? DVDA5? something else? who knows?).

If I was checking out a demo of DVDA5 and came across this problem I wouldn't think for more than 1 second about whether this was a product I wanted to trust. I would go elsewhere. Surely we all want these problems to be fixed rather than worked around so that more people buy the product and Sony spends more money improving it?

Re: Help, very very bad flickering
 

Lol, the end of my problem was that I just rebuilt my machine. For what ever reason, DVDA 3 would not have the same issue that DVD A 5 did. Weird weird. . My new machine doesn't have the same problem. Crazy stuff.