I consistently see this behavior:

I have a title (white text on a black screen) that I fade-in using a dissolve through transparent attached to the leading edge of the clip.

When I render to .avi, I always get the following: screen is black, as expected. Then there is one frame of the fully exposed text. Then the fade-in begins and runs as expected. How is that single frame getting in there? Does not seem to appear in the preview window. Am I being sloppy somewhere and missing something by "one" unit of some sort?

This happens consistently and seemingly only with Text.