pete, the "standards" set by the DVD forums are followed by hollywood DVD producers, right?

((Yup, basically there are 2 systems, one is mandatory and the other is elective. Mandatory refered to a mandatory audio format with MUST be included on ANY commercial DVD> These 2 formats are PCM uncompressed and AC3. Elective formats are MPG2 audio <embedded> and DTS))

if that is the case movies like open range or classic movie on DVD releases contain 96kHz Dolby 1.0 MONO (just coming from center speaker ONLY). is that standard?
((If its AC3, its not a common standard, however it IS a standard as it is in AC3 format))

if that is so why can't i encode that into DVD Architect? i've tried many combinations and whenever DVD Architect sees something different it always converts ALL audio to either Dolby 5.1 448kHz or Dolby 2.0 192kHz.

((This is because you have either elected ac3 stereo or ac3 5.1 in the project settings. You can (or should be able to) overide this in the disc creation area. I think.. i have never needed to do this but looking at the creation element, DVDA will tell u whether or not it is compliant.
To be honest with you, i can see where youre going with this, however it may well be that Sony only licensed the 2 formats (stereo, stereo surround using metadata, and 5.1 <with or without metadata> )

i've NEVER been able to import/encode any other bit-rate, channels, etc. also hollywood movies released on DVD contains a number of unconvential Dolby 3.0 (just front 3 channels), Dolby 4.0 (like a quad) and so on. they have all been released on DVD commercially and everyone can play them on standalone players.

((as mentioned, it may well be that Sony havent licensed this element within DVDA3.. The encoder WILL give u these formats and i cant say whether any other authoring tool of this level will do it either. I know Maestro does this, but maestro is tedious and expensive.. I havent tried with Encore, but i really do think Encore is far more limiting and sluggish than what Architect is. ))

but one thing to consider is that a stereo track at 192kbs will only take abotu 200mb of space on a 4.3gb disc.. it really wont kill your project

hi peter,

thx for answering my questions =). i really appreciate it.

it's not about space but about artistic freedom (or anal retentive nature of artists in general). let's just say, for example, that i would like to emulate a classic film release and i would like to use Dolby 1.0 (96kHz) like they do on classics for black&white films released on DVD. why shouldn't i have creative license to do so on DVD Architect? that's just weird to me. or... like open range i want to save space and not put another 200MB into the already crowded 4.3gb or 8.3gb (dual layer) DVD. i would like to put a mono track that is much, much smaller so i can give my movie a commentary without sacrificing video quality. i'm not saying these are projects i'm working on but i'm just referring to the freedom to have the tools that are capable of doing all these things. i know that you can encode the .ac3 files to be anything you want, but DVD Architect isn't letting me preparing the DVD files with the exact specs i want for my movie.

also, to others, do you know of any DVD creation software that allows what i want but for a really cheap price? does DVD Lab do this?

u know i reckon u should post this up to the SOny Media Forums.
I havent really delved into this element (apart from stereo and 5.1) however u might get a reponse from one of the SOny techs.. ??

Does anyone mind giving me some advice? I am considering upgrading to Vegas 6 and moving to HD (the FX1). In the past I have authored DVDs with Sonic ReelDVD but found out I can't do 24p with it so feel it's time to upgrade. So I was considering also getting DVD Architect 3. I downloaded the demo and was wondering if anyone knew of any links to tutorials that would walk me through some of it's DVD authoring features and save me some time in making my decision?

there are the sony seminar series dvds available for training , but Jay has uploaded the NAB seminar, (which is what the seminar series are based on) which goes thru step by step.. albeit rushed for time