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The way I did it in the end was to produce 6 discreet channels (L, C, R, LR, RR, LFE) and supplied these as AIFFs for layback to HDCam SR from Final Cut Pro.

Then I could also create a AC3 using compressor to layback a surround mix to DVD using DVD Studio Pro.

What would be really interesting to know though, is the process that people take in the actual 5.1 mix. How do you set up your surround channels? How wild do you go with movement? Yes you can listen to the pro studios mixes on DVD, but its hard to know that process behind it all, and exactly the right way its meant to be done! I'm still learning this beast, its a whole new world of mixing!

On a project I recent finished, which was a 35min animated show that will be shown in dome theaters, where the image is projected all around you on the dome), I set it up as follows (although I certainly don't consider myself an expert in movie sound):

Pre-Mix:
Dialog: all dialog laid out in one session and output to a single track per character, with some processing applied.

Music: I composed the music in separate sessions for each cue in Digital Performer. I bounced all midi to audio and then brought all the bounced audio for all cues into one music mix PT session.

The music session had 128 tracks (basically 64 stereo tracks) of audio and that was after I combined a bunch of tracks together. So I had 1st Violins, 2nd Violins, Violas, Cellos, etc. on their own tracks, but I ended up putting some instruments that only happened once in the soundtrack together on the same track to save voices (I also did some voice sharing so I didn't have to combine tracks), and get it to a manageable track count. I didn't want to have to set my PT to 192 tracks/6 DSPs.

I then did some basic mixing adding some EQ, comp etc. I setup that session so that I could record music stems in the session. So I setup stems like Orchestra Instruments: feature, high, medium, low; Orch Perc: high and low., etc. In then end I output the music to 18 stereo stems.

I used sends on certain tracks so that I could easily switch what stem an instrument was going to. For example on some cues the 1st violins were the featured instrument, and on others they would need to be in the high stem. So by using sends I was able to mute and un-mute the send for the proper stem for the instrument on each cue.

Effects: I split the effects up into various sessions for example, ambience, Vehicles, one for each important character, one for secondary characters, and one for miscellaneous. In each of these sessions I setup the effects with some basic processing as needed and setup any number of output stems for each.

I setup each session to record all the effects for that character or whatever to the number of needed output tracks to maintain control, so basically each of the sessions had between 6 and 12 tracks with varying amounts of mono and stereo tracks. If an effect was going to need to be panned around to follow action I would try to make it mono if possible, so that it would be easier to pan it in surround.

Final mix:
I created one session and used import session data to bring in the stems I recorded in each of the components above, DME. So my final mix session had around 12 dialog tracks, 40 music tracks, 50 effects tracks, and some aux tracks for effects devices. This worked well because if I needed to fix something by going back to a pre-mix session I could fix it, bounce only the fixed portion, and then re-import session data and bring back in only the audio stems without affecting any work I had done on the track with volume automation etc.

I did all my surround panning and final leveling in the final mix session. As far as movement is concerned I follow two rules, 1) follow action (obvious) and 2) don't distract the viewer from the fantasy that is the movie.

The cool things about my recent project are that it was basically a cartoon and the image wraps all the way around you. The cartoon aspect allowed me to do some more crazy non-literal sound effects, like boings and swishes among other things. The image wrapping all the way around was a blessing and a curse. It's cool to have an image behind to put sound to, but on the other hand you have to spend more time making the sound movement match action in the surrounds.

Wow, great answer Chris! Really interesting. I'd love to hear/see the project as it sounds great. The great thing about animation is exactly what you said about non-literal sound effects, you can really go to town. My recent project was an kind of homage to a variety of films/genres over the past 80 years (from wartime classics to Russ Meyer to Texas Chainsaw Massacre!), so I had a immense amount of fun with that! Unfortunately I didn't have enough studio time to do exactly what I wanted with the surround mix, and it would have been nice to have the sound match the technology available at the time of the homaged films production.

Thanks, it was certainly longer and more detailed than I intended when I started it.

I would like to find a way to post a clip. I have never output a clip in surround for a youtube type of distribution. I need to get permission to post a clip and then spend a little time in Compressor to see if I can output the clip in surround with decent quality.

If someone is really interested in hearing/seeing it I could probably post a private quicktime download, but it would have to be a link sent to a private email, not a public post. Again, I'd have to look into quicktime and surround. I've never tried to bounce to movie in PT with surround sound, I wonder if that is possible.

I actually plan to do an "actual" mix on the music and send them an updated soundtrack. I just didn't have time to do the kind of surround mix that I originally intended for the music in time for the premier. I basically did as explained in my previous post to set up the music mix, did some basic surround panning an ran with it.

You could always bounce the video to H.264 (great quality, smaller filesize) and the surround mix to AC3, and send both for the recipitant to compile and burn in dvd studio.