I take the same AVI project and render to both MPG2 and to AC3. In all cases, the AC3 file is longer by a few frames. So what does that hurt? If you are creating a looping DVD menu with audio, the length of the menu is autocalculated to be greater of the audio or video length. Since the video runs out before the audio completes, there's a black flash in the video before the menu loops. OK, I can manually go in on every menu and force the length to be a little bit shorter to avoid the flash. But that's a bandaid. (And a pain in the butt I've been doing on every single menu on every project for months). Rendering to MPG and to AC3 (or anything else for that matter) should produce the precise same length rendered output.

Here's a quick way to verify that it's doing this:

1) Take a short AVI file and render it to both MPG2 (no audio) and to AC3.
2) Go to DVDA and create a music compilation (only because music compilations show the precise length of the clip)
3) Drop the MPG and the ac3 clips as different 'songs' in the music compilation.
4) You should see that the lengths of the 'songs' are different.

Menus are the only place this shows up. In many of my videos, I transition segments with a fade to white. Anywhere I link from one segment to another with a fade to white I get a black flash.

To me, this has to be a bug. But is there something I can do to get around it such as ensuring the AVI length is a round number or something?

2G