Hi, i have some questions about dvd-ripping

1-first of all, I'm not happy with the dvd-ripping speed to my pc. Most dvd's just read at a speed of 1x . Even when the dvd-rom seems to spin faster than that (about 6x-8x, listening to the noise of it). I already did some of the tips in the other topic, but nothing works. Is there anything i can do do speed up the process? Or does it depends on the dvd how fast the pc can rip it?

2-In Gordian Knot, is there a way to lower down the hard-decoded subtitles. I'm asking this because I think they are too high on the screen imo.

3-How can i hard-decode subtitles manually on an avi-file?

thanks in advance