I'm not particularly well versed in encoding, but does 2 pass really offer substantial benefit versus throwing more bits at it in a single pass?

Is the objective to get the best compression (least size) or can we allow the size to increase to reduce the encoding time whilst still maintaining quality? We do have 25GB to play with for a BD-R and the mkv won't fit on a DVD-9 anyway.

Just saying perhaps the mkv could be larger to get it out there quicker and the BD using better quality compression.