Ripping stops at 70% (ish) and x264 questions

Hi all,

I've been trying to use dvd::rip today, but I've been having some
trouble ripping.
Every rip "seems" to go fine up to around 70-something percent, then
stops.  If I select multiple titles, all titles get ripped, and all
stop at 70%.

I've tried different discs.

I've tried using 'ddrescue' and creating an ISO, and ripping from
that.  Same thing still.



Also, I'm trying to transcode into x264.  I'm using ffmpeg w/ the x264
codec.  I set it up with defaults, but I get
[libx264 @ 0x8b7d8b0]broken ffmpeg default settings detected
[libx264 @ 0x8b7d8b0]use an encoding preset (vpre)

i've dug around, and it's because ffmpeg uses some "bad" defaults for
x264 apparently.  The x264 solution is to pass "-vpre hq" (or another
preset) but I can't work out how to "pass" this in transcode.  I
realise that this particular question seems transcode-related, but I'm
currently looking for a GUI type option to select a preset.

Is it just a case of "use another codec" for now?

Thanks,
William