I have created a DVD::RIP PXE server that will create a cluster from a bunch of machines to do what you are intending to do quickly and easily. I have written a HOWTO if people are interested in it, which should take less than an hour to configure the first time around, and less than 5 minutes after that.

My cluster consists currently of 7 machines, one master (AMD 64 Dual Core, 512mb ram, 2 x Gb Ethernet cards, HDD and DVD-RW) and 6 nodes (AMD 64 Dual Core, 1280Mb Ram, No HDD, no DVD, PXE Ethernet card) and I am able to rip at 70fps per machine, all on a Belkin gigabit switch. A 2h30min DVD transcode in 55 minutes, and a 90min movie in 26 minutes.

The system can probably go quicker if my network could be improved, as that is my major bottleneck at present.

The beauty of the systems is that can PXE boot any machine (even windows machines etc, with existing operating systems) and they will mount an NFS drive on the main RIP server and act as a node without any impact on their operating systems. Any server administrators with nothing to do on nightshift with a couple hundred CPU's and a nice network can now rip dvd's at the speed of light!!

You can of course just transcode on the main machine if you do not yet have any spare machines, and just add them later. Let me know if there are any interest

The whole system is Ubuntu based, but I am sure can be adapted for any Linux version

I would be happy to share it with your viewers, although I do not know if you have a default template for how-to's. If you do, let me know about it and I will format it accordingly.