As for editing and making MPEG-2, I'd be very careful to find out beforehand exactly what Vegas does in order to make DVD-spec video. Does it internally render 29.97 fps, and encode as such, or will it pass true 23.976 fps and let TMPEGEnc add flags?
I don't do MPEG-2 encoding in Vegas. I just use Vegas for editing to .avi, and then use TMPGE for encoding to MPEG-2. My understanding is that I can edit in Vegas in 23.976, and have TMPGE add the pulldown flag. After reading this discussion, that is what I am going to try to do.

I'm more a video than audio guy, so my vote would be to subtly tweak the audio to match the frame-accurate video. I think you open a whole new can of worms by trying to sync audio and video by duplicating film frames. In my opinion, you'd be better off to take frame-length chunks of audio out here and there, to match the video.

If I do that for the DVD, I'll be sure and keep the non-chopped version for download if anyone wants to use the original soundtrack for anything.
Also, keep in mind that 24 fps is not 23.976 fps is (probably) not 23.98 fps -- those differences right there may be enough to make the audio drift!

Yeah, I'm not sure how best to handle that. Any suggestions?

Also, anyone have any suggestions on TMPGE settings? I have my set of parameters I like, but you folks might have some additional tricks you can suggest. I notice a lot of you use CCE (which I don't have) and some of you have MainConcept (which I have but don't like as much as TMPGE).

This is cool, I'm learning a lot.