Sorry, I thought I'd answered all your e-mails.
The "settings" string contains ALL of the settings for your encoder. It is stored as a single string in the registry, or perhaps many places in the registry (such as one setting for ripping, one for burning, one for the UPnP server). (the encoder does not store this, the invoker of the encoder does).
Basically, you take all the configurable options of your encoder, and package them up into a single string, or take the string and set all the options.
Basic example: the encoder handles flavor ("vbr" or "cbr") and bitrate
(some number - for simplicity, the number is used for both flavors).
Then an encoding string might look like "flavor=vrb&bitrate=128".
You are responsible for writing the code that parses the string and turns it into the actual options needed by your encoder, and for generating the string so that the invoker of the encoder can store the options for later use.
Hope this helps,
j