I use TDA to author my DVDs. Sometimes I like to added my own Menu clip with background audio. I even like to do this when I backup my commerical DVDs. In this case, I'll extract a short audio segment from the DVD for the background audio. Usually this is ac3 to wav. Then I encode the audio clip (to mp2) and use that in TDA. TDA then reecondes the menu audio to PCM. In most cases the audio for the tracks are ac3 (either 6-channel in case of a commerical DVD backup or 2-channel in case of a TIVO recording), so the track audio left as is in the original.

1. I realize that I'm degrading the menu audio by ac3 ==> wav ==> mp2 ==> PCM. It there a more efficient way of doing this?

2. Also, I use goldwave and trial and error to try to match the volume of the bgm audio to that of the tracks. I don't do this quantatively, I do this based on listening to the authored BGM audio and then the track audio (I do this few times) ... highly error prone since I'm using my ears to listen to each one sequentially. Is there a better way of doing this? Are there any tools that I could use to quantatively analyze the audio levels of the authored DVD BGM audio and track audio and adjust accordingly?

3. What methods do you use to generate your BGM audio and make sure that it's consistent with the track audio?