diff --git a/docs/advanced.md b/docs/advanced.md
index 17312ac6..fd60a21f 100644
--- a/docs/advanced.md
+++ b/docs/advanced.md
@@ -566,9 +566,12 @@ fast "speculative" PDF/A conversion that avoids Ghostscript when possible:
 3. If validation passes, Ghostscript is skipped entirely
 4. If validation fails or verapdf is unavailable, falls back to Ghostscript
 
-This approach is faster and avoids some Ghostscript limitations (such as
-image transcoding), but only works for PDFs that are already "mostly"
-PDF/A compliant.
+This fast path avoids some Ghostscript limitations (such as image
+transcoding) and is used whenever it can produce valid PDF/A. When it
+cannot — for example when veraPDF is not installed, or the input needs real
+conversion — `auto` falls back to Ghostscript so that it still produces
+PDF/A by default, matching OCRmyPDF 16 and earlier. If even Ghostscript
+cannot safely produce PDF/A, `auto` outputs a regular PDF instead of failing.
 
 ### PDF/A conversion flow
 
diff --git a/docs/releasenotes/version17.md b/docs/releasenotes/version17.md
index 9809d751..84ad9b1d 100644
--- a/docs/releasenotes/version17.md
+++ b/docs/releasenotes/version17.md
@@ -5,6 +5,18 @@
 
 ## v17.8.0
 
+- `--output-type auto` (the default) again produces PDF/A whenever it can,
+  matching OCRmyPDF 16's "PDF/A by default" behavior. It first tries the fast
+  Ghostscript-free conversion (validated by veraPDF when available) and now
+  falls back to Ghostscript when that cannot produce PDF/A, only emitting a
+  regular PDF when even Ghostscript cannot safely convert (for example, an
+  input with non-embedded CID/CJK fonts, per {issue}`1561`). A consequence is
+  that the default path may once again invoke Ghostscript, which is slower and
+  may transcode images; use `--output-type pdf` to skip PDF/A conversion
+  entirely.
+- Fixed detection of veraPDF 1.30.0 and newer: recent builds print JVM
+  warnings before their version string, which caused OCRmyPDF to report
+  veraPDF as unavailable and skip the fast PDF/A path.
 - OCRmyPDF no longer silently corrupts a non-embedded CID (CJK) text layer when
   producing PDF/A ({issue}`1561`). PDF/A requires all fonts to be embedded, so
   Ghostscript substitutes and re-embeds non-embedded CID fonts — such as the OCR