DVDA default settings - a cautionary tale
 

When I started this post it was to beg for some help in sorting out a mixed footage problem. I have spent the entire evening trying to resolve an issue that I thought I would have worked out in five minutes.

No matter what combination of settings I tried in Vegas to output a mixed footage timeline I could not produce a file that would play without horrendous jaggies in DVDA. I had typed in all my project settings for you to inspect, down to the last tiny detail, and I was expecting a bit of a roasting from people that would say I should know better. I thought for completeness that I should quickly check the files in VLC or WMP. They worked fine! So I started to look elsewhere for the root cause of my troubles.

The problem? I installed DVDA 5.2 today and what doesn't it do? It doesn't bring all my personalised settings over from the previous version. That four hours wasted could have been saved if I had only checked the DVDA project settings and seen that they were defaulting to NTSC not PAL.

Why on earth can't Sony include something simple like a settings export facility (it would be even nicer if the installation looked for a previous version and asked if you wanted to import your settings)? Same goes for Vegas. Pain in the backside.

Anyway, the good news is that I wasn't being an ass with Vegas, just an ass for not checking DVDA sooner.

I thought others might want to know about my misfortune as I am almost certain there will be other people who forget to set their defaults when installing new versions of Sony software.

First of all, good looking out Ian. it is tempting for us to hide episodes in which it was our own oversight that caused a problem, but you shared your experience for the sake of the many. Thank you.

So many people blame Vegas, the camera, whatever for their problems....often it is self-inflicted, at least in my own case.

I think another good idea might be that when you open DVDA the first time after installation, that it offers you the chance to set your default project properties. This would be relatively simple to add to the program and would minimize installation issues, at least one would hope.

Ian, you're not the first (and I'm certain you won't be the last) PAL user to get bitten by this.
As Jeff (and many others) have said, it shouldn't be too hard for Sony to put something in the prefs file saying this is an NTSC system or this is a PAL system and adjust accordingly.

I find it extremely frustrating that I can make an NTSC DVD, send it to the UK, Europe or any other PAL country and they can stick it into their PAL DVD player and watch it.
Multi-standard electronics are very very slow to catch on on this continent and I think that reflects poorly on us.