Hopefully I can shed some light on the pre-trigger and trigger.
First, I would suggest looking at the PDB Block diagram, as this really explained things for me.
The PDB0_MOD is used for overall timing of the PDB block or how long it takes for the PDB to restart (if in continuous mode).
The pre-trigger delay values are for individual timing of the channel triggers (e.g. ADC0-SC1A, ADC0-SC1B, ADC1-SC1A, ADC1-SC1B, etc.). The values of these delays MUST be less than or equal to the MOD value otherwise they will never activate.
To clarify:
In one-shot mode, the value of MOD is almost completely irrelevant since the actual timing of the pre-triggers are defined by their own pre-trigger delay. Just as long as the pre-trigger delays are less than the MOD value.
In continuous mode, the MOD value defines how frequently the whole cycle of pre-triggers repeats.
Also, if it wasn't clear, there is an input trigger that starts the PDB block. This can come from a bunch of different modules but I usually just set the PDB0_SC software trigger once to start it and leave it running in continuous mode.
One thing I struggled with for a bit: the bypass mode of the pre-triggers completely ignores any timing as soon as an input trigger is received. If you are in continuous mode, this means that the trigger will re-issue (with a 2 cycle delay) indefinitely after each ADC conversion is completed, which is almost always undesirable behaviour. I'm not really sure what the point of the bypass feature is. Maybe somebody can clarify?