[Martin Schinz]

Hey Greg,
there is obviously quite a few parameters that influence the encoding of the ac3, most decidedly the dialnorm level and the bitrate. If you have access to Final Cut the documentation for apples Compressor software is quite complete on this subject.
The ac3 you create should play on any 5.1 player, as the channel panning information is encoded into the bitstream, so nothing more to worry about once the audio is in this format.
Hope that helps,
Martin

[Martin Schinz]

As the audio is encoded to an AC3 stream for the DVD Mastering anyway, it doesn’t really matter in what way you mix or deliver it, as long as it is clearly labeled for channel assignment.
Hope that helps,
martin