Sadly I see a great likelihood that Russia will have to demonstrate resolve here and use a nuclear weapon. But as mentioned even that may not be enough because to back down after that is to admit and accept defeat and look weak. But rationally Russia cannot submit to blackmail and must call their bluff.

The only way I can see out of this without nuclear weapons flying should the west continue to escalate and not veer off would be a world war in a very improbable scenario where China/DPRK send troops to help defeat NATO in conventional warfare in Ukraine which would of course mean naval battles and probably a hard decoupling from China (but not a total blockade for long) as well as the new Cold War taking definite shape.

Of course there is an off-ramp that allows the west some face. It’s possible Russia will accept an ending many long speculated on which is they keep the east plus a buffer while NATO occupies a rump state in the west so it can call it a draw. The problem arises if Russia isn’t given enough of a buffer to their satisfaction or if NATO doesn’t put a lid on the Nazis firing weapons at civilians and conducting terror attacks across that border. Given the unlikelihood that they’ll put a stop to that and CIA backed assassination attempts by the SBU, I’m not sure even that is reasonable for Russia to accept and in light of that and the need to press on to bitter end to put these terrorists to an end they’d be wise not to allow NATO to cross over.

From the bottom of the article:

This article was first published by Russia in Global Affairs, translated and edited by the RT team

I think it’s an engineered thing by the Biden admin to attempt to put pressure on Republicans to pass the money for the Ukro-nazis that extends far into the next president’s term which they’ve been reluctant to do. Fair chance of succeeding as in a way it’s kind of amusing they’ve held out this long. Biden doesn’t want a public collapse of Ukraine right as things go into election.

Convenient timing to push the House to vote yes to throw money into Ukraine, fake China, and Isn’treal.

Laughable analysis after the third paragraph.

Russian lives don’t matter to the young, they’re just as blood thirsty. Nor do Chinese. It’s simply that this issue has a mature counter narrative and movement going back decades. That’s all. These same youth are happy to wish death and misery on Russia and China, to support Nazis in Ukraine, to support color revolutions in China and to support break-away renegade provinces in China.

Fact is Palestinians are seen as weak victims thus deserving of sympathy whereas Russia, China are seen as big authoritarian baddies. The same impulse of being upset at perceived (real or invented by US propagandists) mistreatment of people is weaponized successfully to mobilize against America’s enemies in other cases.

Decomb filter is set and will increase the effort needed. Unless the video is noticeably interlaced (line artifacts, not likely for most blurays) and you’re trying to fix that there’s no reason to run it. (Note however this is the least time intensive thing you’re doing, I just mention it for completeness, to be honest handbrake may have detection so it only runs while needed but I’ve always set it manually and only as needed)

Besides that though you’re using software encoding which while better will take much longer. Try setting the encoding tune under video settings to something faster.

Alternatively set your encoder to use NVENC version of the scheme you want (264) With NVENC encoding 30 minutes without anything else should take 7 minutes or so.

One last thing. You seem to have it set to burn subtitles in. This generates a lot of extra work and is not advisable unless your hardware or software does not support soft-subs as a separate stream in for instance an mkv file. Most modern streaming devices will handle plain text and PGS image subtitles in my experience. Try instead to set the default and forced flags if you want subtitles to be on by default.