I've been using IMTOO DVD Ripper Platinum (using the WMV2 codec) on Windows XP to create .AVI files. It has worked well for my last three projects: 27-minute DVD, 42-minute DVD, and 15-minute DVD respectively.

However, my last video project involved producing a 2 hour and 15 minute video (burning this DVD at a different speed than the previous three projects because of the huge time increase to over 2 hours).

This may be a cause for the problem-maybe not...the problem being that when my ripper software registers this DVD, it automatically compresses the preview (and the image) horizontally: a black margin on the right and left side of the now distorted image. Is there anything I can do to rectify this? Does this ripper have a limit on video time to be ripped? Should I try to rip separate chapters? Is there another inexpesive/free ripper that's better?

In addition, as part of the process, I create separate .FLV files from the .AVI file using the ON2 FLixPro encoder. This usually takes two or three hours, but I tried it on a five-minute section of this large video, and after NINE hours, it was only 20% complete! Could this extensive time be related to the compressed file/forced codec?

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!