Try creating a new preset in WinFF with the attributes printed in red in this post. Save it with a different name, so you can identify it. This has worked very well for me. I do have to extract the VOB files from the DVD first with another program and then merge the VOB’s with another utility beforehand though. After all this, a run through SMC wil do the final conversion and transfer it to my player or SD card. And yes, the size of the files will sometimes double.
Also, you mentioned you have v1 models. There is already a preset in WinFF for Rockboxed players (v1’s). Thre are several ‘RB’ presets; find the one that says Sansa. Try converting using this. Interestingly, this preset did not work in Rockbox for me, but played without a hitch on the SanDisk firmware. It ends up being .mov format as opposed to .avi for the v2’s or Fuze models.
The bad thing I noticed was that the final picture was much smaller than normal, and you don’t have to turn the player sideways (landscape) to watch the video.
