Finally got this DVD ripped and copied to my iPhone

This was a lot more work than I expected. Then again, I am a newb. And lazy.

• yum install streamdvd – This is what I used to rip the DVD to a VOB file. I played around with a few other utils, including vobcopy and dvd::rip, but this was the only one I tried that ripped the DVD to a single VOB file AND started the movie at the right place. I’m sure there’s other ways to do it, but streamdvd > whatever.vob worked well for me.
• You need to recompile ffmpeg with AAC support. I followed this great walkthrough; you need to install a bunch of libs but when I was done I ended up ffmpeg supporting everything I needed:

  [evan@evanfc12 ~]$ ffmpeg -version
FFmpeg version SVN-r22963, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jul 11 2010 11:48:47 with gcc 4.4.3 20100127 (Red Hat 4.4.3-4)
configuration: --prefix=/usr --bindir=/usr/bin --datadir=/usr/share/ffmpeg --incdir=/usr/include/ffmpeg --libdir=/usr/lib64 --mandir=/usr/share/man --arch=x86_64 --extra-cflags='-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic' --extra-version=rpmfusion --enable-bzlib --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdirac --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --enable-libfaad --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --disable-debug --disable-stripping --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --enable-runtime-cpudetect
libavutil 50.14. 0 / 50.14. 0
libavcodec 52.66. 0 / 52.66. 0
libavformat 52.61. 0 / 52.61. 0
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libavfilter 1.19. 0 / 1.19. 0
libswscale 0.10. 0 / 0.10. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
FFmpeg SVN-r22963
libavutil 50.14. 0 / 50.14. 0
libavcodec 52.66. 0 / 52.66. 0
libavformat 52.61. 0 / 52.61. 0
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libavfilter 1.19. 0 / 1.19. 0
libswscale 0.10. 0 / 0.10. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
[evan@evanfc12 ~]$

• Used WinFF to encode the VOB file to .m4v, with these preset settings (conveniently included in the Windows version of WinFF):
  

  -r 29.97 -vcodec libx264 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -crf 21 -bt 256k -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_method full -me_range 16 -subq 5 -partitions +parti4x4+parti8x8+partp8x8 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -level 30 -trellis 2 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -s 320×240 -aspect 4:3 -acodec libfaac -ab 112kb -ar 48000 -ac 2 -vpre default

That created the .m4v, I loaded it into iTunes and it synced to the phone and plays perfectly. Hooray!