Just in case it helps someone...

[dryfter]

If you happened to have downloaded a raw DVD off the internet, and want to convert it into a nice DivX-style MPEG4 file to it doesn't take up 4.5 Gb, then the following couple of commands do the job nicely..

# Pass 1
cat vobs/VTS_01_[12345].VOB | mencoder -aid 128 -o /dev/null -ovc lavc \
     -lavcopts vhq:vbitrate=1160:vpass=1:vlelim=-3:vcelim=5:lumi_mask=0.04:dark_mask=0.01:vqcomp=0.6:acodec=mp3:abitrate=192 \
    -oac copy -
# Pass 2
cat vobs/VTS_01_[12345].VOB | mencoder -aid 128 -o carlito2.avi -ovc lavc \
    -lavcopts vhq:vbitrate=1160:vpass=2:vlelim=-3:vcelim=5:lumi_mask=0.04:dark_mask=0.01:vqcomp=0.6:acodec=mp3:abitrate=192 \
    -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=192 -
                                                                                
# Halve these rates if you want to fit onto a single CD..

mencoder run at an average of 31 fps on my PC, which is encoding at a teensy bit faster than realtime.. Except that it's a two-pass affair, and thus actually took twice as long. Plus some time wasted experimenting with different options.

I think you should be able to do away with the cat *.vob kind of stuff and just use the mencoder dvd://1 style of options if you also pass an option to mencoder that pretends your DVD drive is actually mounted under ./vobs or whereever you downloaded the movie too..

Of course, I'll watch the movie off the VOBs first for the quality after all the time that took to d/l!
Whatever happened to the (de)CSS stuff? I've always found mplayer just happily "works" with VOB off DVDs, even though they surely should be encrypted. I know its been trivial to bypass for a long time, so has software just started including decss stuff as a matter of course?