A change in dvdauthor behaviour - INFO: no default video format, must explicitly specify NTSC or PAL

Hi, after spending a long time trying to create a simple dvd and getting
the error :
NFO: dvdauthor creating table of contents
INFO: Scanning /tmp/dvd-out/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO
ERR:  no video format specified for VMGM
Failed

I finally googled to this page :
http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/Video_Format_Pref
and did this "export VIDEO_FORMAT=PAL" and finally succeeded in creating
a dvd again, I've put the environment variable in my
"/etc/bash.bashrc.local" so I won't have this problem again.
This happens with dvdauthor-0.7.0, the latest from packman.
The worst thing about this is thinking that it's something wrong with
the source video and the last thing you look for is an unannounced
change in dvdauthor which is the basis of most dvd authoring packages.
The developers of dvdauthor could have at least given a clue in the
message "INFO: no default video format, must explicitly specify NTSC or
PAL" about how to specify a default format. One good thing, I've learned
a lot about command line dvd authoring over the last couple of days.
Regards
Dave P