byeelec, thanks, i will try that. did not consider the surround sound issue. the last time i did it, i used super with your settings, then ran it thru mencoder again with the higher sound settings, and it worked perfectly, though i would of course like to avoid that step if possible.

i'm finding that the safest way to do this is to do each VOB file individually, the 8100 seems to like it better this way (especially with the control response time)