Ran into a glaring problem somewhat consistant with Pinnacle Studio 8. When making DVDs from edited DV footage, the audio ALWAYS gets out of sync.

However, some people haven't had this problem.

I got to reading NTSC DVD player spec, and learned most players cannot support Mp2 audio, but PAL players *do*.

I understand AC3 audio to use bitrate to calculate sync, but MP2? Doesn't MP2 use a frame-based timing mechanism? If I had shot 24p or 30p, instead of 29.997, (or used AC3) I've a feeling it wouldn't have stepped out of sync a few minutes into the movie.

I could be all wrong. I'm looking for other softs to replace Pin. Studio 8.

For editing, I used uncompressed AVIs from a direct camera dump. Audio was in WAV. Test runs with a harddisk based DVD image had the same sync problems.

I've yet to experiement with the AC3 audio encoding (not enough time to toy with it) but am I way off track here?

I don't know the product so I can't really comment. But personally
I think it would be better to stick to AC3 anyway. It will compress
better and it is the defacto standard for (commercial) DVD's.

I had A/V sync DVD problems with any version of Studio8 after 8.5.21, even though my output audio format was PCM. So, I think there is trouble beyond your choice of MPEG1 Layer II for your DVD audio. My source footage was DV transferred via firewire.

I don't see these problems in Studio9.1.2, but most of my 40+ clips are in the 2 minute duration range.

As an owner of Studio9, I would say stick to Studio8.5.21 .
Studio9 is a glitz upgrade of Studio8. All of the major editing, DVD output bugs in S8 are still in S9. The best new feature of
Studio9 is that your DVD volume label is now fixed to the name of your project rather than "Pinnacle Systems."

I like the workflow of Studio8, but really, the thing just slows to a crawl on larger projects. I've used Vegas for individual cleanup in the past. I've pretty much given up on Studio9. Really, there is no new engineering going on there since Studio8. Studio is a great integration for rapid production of DVDs, but it just isn't going to make it. I wish I knew that before blowing money on Studio9 . I think I'm more of a customer for LiquidEdition, but there is no way I'm spending that much money after experiencing Studio.