Xvid 1.0.1 not properly creating xvid-twopass.stats file

Hello.
I've been quite happy with xvid for a long time, but just recently
upgraded to the 1.0.1 release to fix a few bugs (especially the
speedups) from the 1.0.0-rc3 release i was using up until now.
However, I'm noticing a very large problem. Possibly its due to the
source of the file, possibly a bug in xvid, possibly a bug in mencoder.
I'm not sure at this point.
I'm trying to encode a particular piece off of one of my dvds,
specifically the Kill Bill "making of / behind the scenes" bit. Its
about half an hour long.

Here is what im using for an encoding command:
mencoder -oac copy -o /dev/null -ovc xvid -xvidencopts
pass=1:bitrate=700:qpel:gmc:vhq=3:max_bframes=2:hq_ac  -vf
scale=640:480,kerndeint -fps 29.970 -ofps 29.970 dvd://2
mencoder -oac copy -o MakingOfKillBill.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts
pass=2:bitrate=700:qpel:gmc:vhq=3:max_bframes=2:hq_ac  -vf
scale=640:480,kerndeint -fps 29.970 -ofps 29.970 dvd://2

During the first-pass encode process, i get a xvid-twopass.stats file
created, and have verified its creation/content by running it thru cat,
wc, and such while mencoder is going.
As soon as this pass stops however, the file truncates itself and
becomes, (pasted verbatim from cat)

# XviD 2pass stat file (core version 1.0.1)
# Please do not modify this file


and is all of 78 bytes long.
-rw-r--r--    1 mike     users          78 Jun 11 00:35 xvid-twopass.stats

Can anyone give me some insight on why this is happening?

I'm using MPlayer 1.0pre4, with a new CVS ffmpeg libavcodec dir from
06-08-2004, as well as the tivomplayer patch from 1.0pre3 with a few
manual additions to get it to apply to the configure/Makefile files
properly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

Mike