I use VidCoder (basically a HandBrake clone for windows). It’s much better.
You have plenty of control, it’s stable and FREE. (needs .NET 4)
Very easy to rip DVDs or Blu-ray to MKV. It keeps chapters, subs, can select more than one audio track.
It can downmix DTS to AC3 or AAC (both stereo or 5.1).
You also have control of the Aspect Ratio - important for anamorphic DVDs (non-square pixels).
You have a couple of presets included. Depending on the speed of your PC, the time you have and the level of quality you desire in your output, you can experiment different settings.
I personally hate CQ (Constand Quality) as it can take more on certain action scenes and allocate bitrate inneficiently.
My choice is 2-Pass with target size. Variable bitrate gives better quality. If you limit it, say 2000k you have static dark scenes taking about the same space as hi-action light-flashing scenes - and there you see macroblocks.
Below are my settings. A reasonable compromise between quality and speed.
Here are better settings, taking LONGER to encode but produce a slightly better result.
Other thing I like about VidCoder, is that you can pick any scene (5 - 30 seconds) and do the encoding to test your settings, without encoding the whole 2h long video.
I have been using this for more than a year. The output is playable in iPad/iPhone.
However, if you already have the MKVs and want iOS compatible files use MkvToMp4 for that.
It only take a couple of minutes if your file is already x264/avc (it probably is if mkv) and has AAC audio.
This can convert audio to AAC 2.0 (iOS can’t play 5.1) if required and also lets you enter M4V metainfo (subs, cover, info etc.). NOTE: you can put first audio-track 2.0 AAC and keep the other(s) whatever you prefer (AC3/DTS/MP3).
Again, this is for the default iOS player, other iOS video-players have no problem playing 1080p DTS :-)
