I am writing scripts to help with two-track (video and audio) cuts-only editing. However, there are boundary problems because the audio is shorter than the video by various random amounts. Sometimes the audio is the same length as the associated video event, sometimes shorter. It is never longer. The audio and video always start at the same exact point; they just end at different times.

I capture using Vegas. It is standard 4:3 NTSC DV AVI, captured over 1394, like I've done a million times. I've looked at all my Vegas options, and reset them to factory default, but I still get these differences.

I can obviously put in a "slop" variable so that anything within that slop range is considered identical, but this offends my sensibilities. I've been aware of this problem in Vegas for a long time, and suspect that it is responsible for all sorts of little glitches, like blank frames.

Is this "normal" (that is, the way Vegas 5.0b works), or do I have a problem that is specific to my setup that I need to troubleshoot?

Thanks!