Heh. I did my first DVD to SVCD conversion the other day.

Used XMPEG to rip the DVD on the fly to a really high bitrate/quality .avi DIVX. Used TMPG to encode to correct NTSC SVCD standards. Used VCDImager to make quick and easy BIN/CUEs. Burnt it, and wow.. on my standalone apex dvd player, it looks exactly like dvd quality. I'm proud :)

Technical stats:
29.97 FPS
95 minutes on 2 80 min CDs
2049 kpbs bitrate (used 2 pass VBR though)
224 kbit sound

That's all i can remember. I was thinking though, couldn't I just use a videoserver for XMPEG and rip directly to .mpg? Any comments or suggestions for improvements are welcome. Doing this first rip sure took a lot of time in experimenting and getting things working just right.