This is just a curiosity thing really. When you rip a DVD, what is more important to you...faster ripping/encoding or highest quality? Basically, if it would take you, say, 20 hours to encode a movie and have it come out absolutely beautiful, is that extra time worth it to you? Or would you rather shave a few (heh...a few?) hours off your encoding time and end up with a "really good" quality avi?

best quality.

Heh...good. I'm not just an anal retentive freak then.

Quality

But I take that back.

On a few of my rips, Suburbia and Killer Condom, I couldn't really do those DVDs any justice.

Well, leave it up to me to disagree with the majority -

If quality is a grail to you then go for a 2cd rip with less heavier settings......Should only take a bit longer than investing 20+ hours in that way lower 1cd bitrate....(not suggesting that bitrate is everything)....
Ofcourse it will take you twice the time and bandwidth to spread, but hey, I'm afraid it's one or the other.....

NOT FORGETTING SOMETHING IMPORTANT : if the source is blurry (like a vhs master ), then one must ask himself wether it is worth the trouble applying every trick known for a shitty 5-25 % improved pic quality.....

If you use divx5.1.1 be carefull with that best quality/slowest setting, unless you have a seperate Pc to do caps....
If you use xvid you might disable VHQ and get away with it( short running time, sharp source required though) as it increases time to encode considerably.....

Having said all that, it really is situation unique....

Ah, I'll just shut up