>>> You are getting 5.1 in Vegas correct?

Correct. I am getting surround from everything. I just always figured DVD-A was a stereo only preview thing until I notice the option for using the surround mapper. Is anyone getting surround previews?

> Internal options has a setting for "Show layer breakpoint dialog" but it seems to do nothing. I am looking for a way to manually place a "breakpoint" chapter, if you will, on the timline - or at least have visual flags come up.

The first time you burn a DL DVDA asks how you want to handle break points ie automatically, show all breakboints. select the best one,... The flag in internal refers to this dialog not the breakpoints. Don't change internal flags unless you know exactly what your are doing.

DVDA does not know where the breakpoint can occur until the DVD is compiled. When you start the burn process or write a master DVD you will prompted to choose a breakpoint depending on how you answered the initial layerbreak dialog. It there are no breakpoints DVDA will tell you which movie and the time where to set a chapter point to be used a breakpoint. You exit the burn, add the chapter point, and prepare the project again. Remember adding this chapter point wll change your chapter numbering.

Ed

"...any surround audio is always "Stereo downmixed"..."

I *think* this *might* be a limitation of DVDA's &/or Windows code -- on some systems it struggles a bit just with 2 channel ac3. Then again I *think* the original philosophy seemed to be that DVDA complemented Vegas, so by the time you had your 5.1 ready for your DVD, it would already have gone thru any testing & tweaking. Anyway those would be my guesses.

RE: Layer breaks...
From a technical perspective the LB should occur at the exact midpoint of the total data to burn, ideally at a new VOB id, & *maybe* have a low mux rate at that point thrown in. DVDA doesn't calculate where it could go until the burn as Ed wrote. It works, but there's other things you might consider...

From a design perspective the LB should happen when you have minimum motion & audio, and be where any pause is least noticeable. From a practical standpoint, if you're using DL RW discs, changing the disc type to DVD ROM enhances compatibility. While it's definitely not necessary to go through the extra work, I've had good results finding a good place for a LB design-wise -- maybe even 2 or 3 candidates -- based on guesstimates of where the midpoint will be. [i.e. If it's a single title with menu, probably a little before the midpoint of the title] [It only has to be close because padding will be added] [If necessary the video can be tweaked before encoding.]

When the project is otherwise complete in DVDA, add the chapter for the LB, & render to hdd. Use PgcEdit to remove the chapter number but leave the cell; IMHO things that make a good chapter almost always make for a poor LB. Optionally you can follow the procedure to create a DL ISO - the process helps confirm if that cell will work well as the LB -- mount the ISO & test, and burn with ImgBurn. If you don't want to go thru all that, &/or you don't want/need to remove the chapter number from the LB cell, ImgBurn will let you select the LB from an ISO you created with DVDA. Either way ImgBurn can set the DVD type to DVD ROM.