[MEncoder-users] Encodes for slow laptop

[Stella-Terra Clemens]

Hello,
I want to thank you all ahead of time for being here and for working hard to
create not only the best encoding tool I've ever used, but the great
community support for said tool.  The Free Software movement is all about
people power, and you all make it possible.  Thank you.
So my question is this:  I got one of those neato XO Laptops from the One
Laptop Per Child group and I've replaced the standard OS with Ubuntu, and
I've been shocked to realize that such a slow laptop has the ability to play
movies.  This is great, and I've decided to encode my sizeable DVD
collection in such a way that they are all playable on the laptop.
Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time getting really consistant results.
Mostly my problem is that I can't keep audio sync.  I've done a number of
different things on the player side, but my number one concern is the
encoding.
First off: what is the best codec to use on a slow system given DVD input
for consistantly smooth playback and as good a picture quality as I can
get?  I tried h264, but that turned out to be way too slow (or was I using
it wrong?)  Mainly I've been trying to use XviD, but is there something else
that would be better in this circumstance?
My second question is: what are the factors that go in to fast video
playback?  I've been messing a lot with the resolution and the bitrate, but
that doesn't seem to have much effect?  Does the container matter much?  Are
there encoder specific settings I should be looking into?
Finally, I wanted to know about resolutions.  I've been reading conflicting
things about resizing.  My instinct is to always crop as little as possible
and then resize to mod16, but I've recently been reading that it's a bad
idea to resize at all.
BTW, the XO has the following stats:
x86 processor at 433 MHz
256M DDR
1200x900 pixel display
More information available here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification
Thank you, everyone!
Stella