I followed the guide on the site and was able to complete creating an AVI but the guide states to go through 2 passes. First pass doesn't have video but audio and the second one has it all. Should I assume the second one is the finish product? Also, is there anyone that can suggest better tools to use and/or less steps to do? Doing it the Guide's way took 24 hours to get the final AVI.
If you could point out the guide then we would know what you used and therefor be able to suggest something else. No reason why a 1st pass can't have video and personally I wouldn't bother with audio on the 1st pass since it will be thrown away anyway. The idea of two passes is that the 1st pass is basically used to gather statistics on the video. These are then used in the 2nd pass to work out bitrate distribution, frame types, etc. so as to give the best quality for a given filesize. You might want to check out AutoGK or similar to automate the whole thing.
