Profiles? Gaps? Stretching? Help!

[betaserver]

I want to rip some DVDs to x264/OGG/Matroska, but I have no idea how to deal with several issues that have come up. Please help me out!

1. I first use DVD Decrypter (IFO mode) to extract and demux my audio and video streams.
2. I then use MeGUI to convert just the video to x264 using CE-Highprofile. Are there any better profiles for high quality < 800MB video files?
3. I then use BeSweetv1.5b31 w/BeLight to convert my audio streams to OGG Q6.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what to do with "delay", and there don't appear to be ANY guides online that explain it!

* Why are audio and video tracks on DVDs delayed?
* Why should I correct this delay when converting?
* I heard that either the video or audio should be delay-corrected, but not both. Does MeGUI with CE-Highprofile automatically correct the video delay?
* BeLight has a "delay" checkbox that gets filled in automatically. Which way does it correct? Should I add a minus to the number it displays? (One of my audio tracks, according to DVD Decrypter, has a delay of 12ms, and BeLight simply fills in "12".)

4. When I add my x264 video to Matroska's mkvmerge, it tells me that it can't automatically detect the frame rate. How do I manually determine the framerate of an x264 file?

* Side question: one of my DVDs (non-letterboxed) has a resolution of 720x480, but VLC media player stretches it out to correct widescreen resolution during playback. How does it know to do this? Is there a tag somewhere that specifies the correct aspect ratio of a DVD segment, or am I simply confused? I'm asking because when I import the same file to MeGUI, it appears extremely stretched out. Matroska fortunately has a "display aspect ratio" option, but where do I find this information?
* Using Matroska, is there any way to create separate "titles" instead of just audio and video tracks? I was thinking of putting some trailers/bonus features/etc. into my rips, but having to select the audio and video tracks manually would be a terrible chore.

Thanks!

[foxyshadis]

CE-Highprofile is probably fine, the HQ- modes are a little slower and marginally higher quality, probably only useful if you're really squeezing blood out of the size. I think CE-High is essentially the same as HQ-Slow.

Why things are delayed, well, you'll have to ask the studios why. Apparently they encode separately and don't keep both tracks perfectly in sync, or something. It's easier to correct while encoding just so you don't have to remember to add it everytime if you remux/re-encode in the future.

Since there's only two streams (three if you count subtitles), figuring out which is delayed and which is true is just semantics. You pick one and go with it. In almost all cases, the audio loses, and frame 0 of the video is fixed as the official start of the pair. Audio is extended or truncated to match. DVD Decryptor also lists audio delay in terms of offset to the video, and Belight will pick up that number from the filename to use. You can be assured that it'll pick the correct direction, such a huge bug wouldn't go unnoticed long.

The framerate of the video will come from the avisynth script that megui spat out for you.

All DVDs have an AR flag, yes, that tells it how to display correctly. DVD Decrypter tags the file with either 4/3 or 16/9 depending, and DGIndex will also pick it up and put it on the parsed d2v.

In mkv, you can use chapters and just attach them to the end, you can use ordered chapters to make them show entirely separately in the same file (but most parsers don't work with this), and I think there was another way that I forgot.

Hope that clarifies things.

[betaserver]

Thank you very much! Your reply has been massively helpful.
A few more questions:

* Why should I enable "dynamic compression" in BeLight? I have good headphones, so volume isn't really be an issue.
* What does "HybridGain" do and why should I enable it?
* Would disabling "LFE to LR" have a drastic effect on audio quality?

[foxyshadis]

Lots more information on all the belight settings:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/belight-advancedsettings.htm

[betaserver]

Ah, thanks! I saw that page linked from Google, but it kept giving me 404 errors.