Two Pass Encoding in VS8?

[heinz-oz]

I had a project that ran about 90 minutes. I rendered it at 8000 kbps and let DVDShrink do it's thing and it came out great Very easy to use too.

You could also have used a bit rate of around 6000 to 6500 kbps and wouldn't have to do another process with DVDShrink

[heinz-oz]

I would not dare to "correct" you since I don't work for Ulead, but I surely disagree.

As I said, my understanding is single/dual pass only improves quality of the output, and is independent of the use of constant or variable bitrate, and relevant to both methods.

It does not influence the file size other than using different algorithms the result will marginally change after compression to MPG.

What it does is trying an alternate compression and check if by chance it improves the result as compared to the original. The best result is kept, the other discarded.
This has the potential of finding a better way in special cases, and its efficiency is proportional to the compression ratio (bitrate) and required quality setting.
It can't fail though: the worst, but typical result, would be that both algorithms give the same result, good or bad. But surely multiplies the time by slightly more than two. So you need to balance the probability of improvement with the time you have to wait.
It is not "the" definitive asset of VS9, but a nice extra touch.

Nothing daring about correcting me as I stated myself, I'm no expert either and, as I stated a few times in different forums here also, I don't work for Ulead either.

I suggest we agree to disagree and leave it at that.