I'm hoping someone can take the time to give me an explanation so I can save three days of trial and error.

The DVD Architect manual says:
"MPEG elementary streams are not supported."

It also says that
"Sonic Foundry's AC-3 and MainConcept MPEG-2 encoders provide templates, that, if used without any modification, result in files that do not require any recompression"

OK - The AC-3 encoder is an Audio Only encoder. Even I can figure that out.

Now, there are 3 different templates for the MPEG-2 encoder, "DVD NTSC," "DVD NTSC Video Stream" and "DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream."

The "DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream" seems like it would be my most likely choice if I want to author in DVD Architect, but the description of the template says it's video only.

I assume I can use the "DVD NTSC" template and replace the audio with the AC-3 encoded file, but that seems like extra work.

From all you folks out there that have already experimented, can anyone share what file types they choose to get the best quality output with the minimum amount of rendering times?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Dave