mccutcheon

To reduce disk clutter, I have been converting my son's DVDs to MPEG-1 files. This way I can get from 3 to 5 movies on a DVD. However, it takes up to 1.5 hours to convert a movie. Question 1 What hardware upgrade would allow me to considerably shorten the time taken to convert. I have 1.5 gig of RAM, and a 3.2 Gig Intel chip. I do not have any sort of graphic card. I use the one built into the mother board Question 2 Occasionally I get a movie which after conversion, the voice is out of sync with the video. Without using excessive Geek-Speak, how can I eliminate this problem. Paul