I'm suspecting that 4 hour estimate includes _everything_ that dvdshrink is doing ...
*just* burning a dvd (as in, start nero, choose dvd-video, and dump in the contents of the video_ts dir) should be about what bendsley said, ~20 mins @ 8x. Same here.
and the problem with 16x is basically, with DVD's, the faster you burn, the lower the burn Q, lessens readability.
for a more scientific explain, google. (I'm curious as well, just havent gotten that far yet).
regarding compression/quality ... god, that's so personal. some people have an eye for those things ... I don't. reeeally.
A properly encoded single layer dvd in a 1-2 disc divx (xvid) is going to pe perfectly acceptable to my standards.
I download lots of movies, and lately i've been reencoding the dvd's, just for space concerns...
if the movie is particularly visually interesting, I leave it as a dvd...
cyrnel - thanks for the auto gordian knot info - i'll look into that.
I've been using SimpleDivx, but maybe this will work better for me.