Another philosophy..

[Fresco]

Encoding a dvd to a cd-r usually goes this way:

single pass audio
insert audio filesize in gknot to calculate video size
two pass video encoding

How bout we try this for a change...

suppose the audiofile should be about 120 MB (for a 700 MB cd)

do a single pass video encoding with the bitrate set so the video size will be around 580 MB.... suppose the outcome is 604 MB

now we do a 2pass audio encoding job so the audio file size is exactly 96 MB (or 91MB is u include muxing overhead)

This should be much faster, and we still have an exact 700 MB avi.. :)

[avih]

2-pass video gives MUCH better results than single pass. that's why, regardless of your audio procedure, you'd wanna use 2-pass for video.

cheers
avi

[NeVeRLiFt]

Not only is two-pass vbr encoding better for the video quality.

But for a 1cd rip you should be using vbr or abr mp3 and the size should be around 60-100mb for the audio.

Cheers :D

[Emp3r0r]

or use vorbis and have an even smaller better quality sound with more room for video. I've been using between 63 and 92kbps for ogg and it sounds great. I think that is 0.1 to 0.2 quality setting, try it for yourself and get a better overall rip.

[theReal]

What about: rip AC3 audio (384-448kbit) in 1-2 minutes, two-pass encode the video, then mux (and most probably split).
5.1 channel Dolby Pro Logic sound just gives a really professional feeling to your rips, I swear! :)

[Fresco]

@theReal

Yes, i've used AC3 too in my divx/xvid movies. But i think a 'lame' setting like --alt-preset standard gives perfect audio quality.

Ok, u still have only two channels, but that doesn't make my rip less professional, i think.

[Emp3r0r]

Dolby Pro Logic is not 5.1, it is 4 channels. Dolby Pro Logic II is much closer to Dolby Digital 5.1

[theReal]

Emp3r0r, I got that wrong. Well... I got it half right because my soundcard is downsampling 5.1 channel AC3 to 4-speaker surround (because of speaker/amplifier limitations), so this kind of resembles Pro Logic?

Fresco, I don't want to say you can't make professional rips without AC3, only I think AC3 surround sound automatically adds some additional "professional feeling" to the rip. Plus it doesn't take time to re-encode the audio. However for some movies I also like mp3 better. As an example "The Big Lebowsky" - I rather have it on one CD with --alt-preset 128 audio. What kind of sound effects do you miss in a movie like this if you only have 2 channels? None, I think.