For 99 pct of the stuff I do (which is a lot, we are couch potatoes from the word go so have worked hard to make the couch experience a cool one) straight linux normal Handbrake rip works great. However for certain DVDs (damaged, protected, etc) then I load up a VirtualBox image of XP with AnyDVD installed (and literally nothing else). I then use AnyDVD to rip the image to a shared folder accessible from Linux and send HandBrake after that image. AnyDVD is nice enough, wish they had a Linux version but glad it exists in any form. If anything ever stops it, I just wait a few days and presto, problem gone. Would that all of life's problems work out this way
It is a little faster at the rip but since for me the rip speed is largely driven by the encoding process and hardware available. As such, having another processor to throw at it will yield better rip speeds that ripping from an image vs a physical disc.
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