DVD Ripper Creating a decent generic profile?

[cmate]

So I am trying to figure out how I can create a profile that will give fairly consistent results when ripping dvd's to generic file. I know I need either XVID or h264.

I have a low-tech old TV and I use an original xbox with media center xbmc to stream.

The problem I find is I get different results with every dvd. Some dvd's look pretty good, but others I might have poor quality - artifacts, pixelation. Usually the worst problem is the video dimensions - sometimes they come out WAY too small, so the resulting video is in a little box on the screen.

I found if I crank everything up, the dimensions and quality, that does help, but then my file sizes average close to 2gigs or more.

Yet I know it is possible to get decent quality in the 1 gig (or less) range.

Right now my I am set to h264, 1054 fixed file size, 2 pass, and the particular dvd I have in right now it chose 320x176. I know from experience those dimensions will be a problem, so I would normally change that to something like 480x270 to up the resolution -- I usually shoot for at least 240 pixels.

For audio I use same as source, as I have had problems with mp3 becoming out of sync - maybe an issue with the xbmc, not sure.

Once upon a time I used to use the divx encoding software (the official one) and it had settings you could choose like 'home theater' , 'vhs', etc. Then you could tweak a few things like file size. It was pretty simple to produce small files (1 gig or less) that looked decent on the computer and on the xbox/tv. I am just looking to get similar results without having to re-rip the same disc several times.

Your help is appreciated.
Thanks!

[samsaidi]

I'm using the following:
1) For my Netgear EVA9150 connected to my plasma/surround,
xvid@2000kbps, audiocopy (DD 5.1) in AVI container, resolution 1024 horiz (or 768 for a 4:3 film) with whatever vertical resolution DVD fab calculates removing black bars. I only remove black bars top and bottom. This results in - mostly - a picture identical to the DVD although you might still see some pixelation on some scenes if you have an LCD TV. Usually 1-1.3Gb
2) I make a separate copy (just put it in the queue in DVDfab) for my portable devices which have a horizontal resolution of 640 - as my Nokia N series and Zen will both accept this res, so will most other devices. I use xvid (eg 640 x 360)@1200 kbps, mp3 (128kbps) in an AVI container which looks fine on most smaller TVs. This again seems to be the most compatible format combination (xvid/mp3) as it works on nokia, creative, ipod. If I want to move the file into a device that doesn't support AVI (eg nokia/ipod) I just dump the AVI file into YAMB and I get a lossless conversion to MP4 (still xvid/mp3) which will play fine.

Hope that helps. It's all a bit of a bind of course. I haven't found any combinations that are compatible with all devices other than these, and I have avoided mp4/h264 as I can't preserve the DD audio in an mp4 container to play on my netgear.

Good luck