A better way to transcode?

VLC is the world’s most awesome transcoding tool, just for the record, but I can’t but help think there have got to be easier ways to transcode. Things like saved presets/preferences would just make the whole process so much faster. And seeing as there are so many options there already, would it be that hard to add in/out point options to the dialog? That way I could transcode without having to then edit + re-encode. Grr.

And I still can’t afford to build an editing PC so I’m stuck with my open-source craziness for a while yet. Progress is being made on a non-PC hardware front, but that doesn’t really help the editing side of things… which, of late, I seem to be spending more time on without really having a clue what I’m doing. Best way to learn…