I'm a newbie and thus using DVDx since it's easy to rip my DVDs to DIVX 5 Pro in one easy step (well two easy steps since I rip it to the hard drive first.) I usually try to rip to 2-CDs since the system I view them on has two CD drives and I'd just as soon get the best quality possible. Just set them up as a playlist and it pauses for maybe 2-3 seconds between files. I can live with that since the quality seems far superior to any 1-CD rip I've downloaded.

I see a lot of people recommending 2-pass since it obviously allocates the bitrates better. But if I don't mind having the DIVX files fill 2 full CDs (and I could also use my 850MB CDs for longer movies) would I really see that much benefit doing 2-pass since the bitrate will be rather high already? Like I said above, I like having the good quality, but I'd rather not have to wait for 2-pass since none of the computers I do the ripping on are super fast (fastest system is a Celeron 1.3.)

Also, if you think 1-pass would be sufficient for a 2-CD rip, should I use CBR or VBR? I'm still experimenting with it, but haven't had enough material to notice any differences yet and wonder if it would matter that much at this bitrate level. The VBR also seems a good bit off using calculators (usually on the low side, so as to only fill 1/2 of the second CD.) Thanks for any help.