As of 2011, I would recommend using Handbrake, an open-source multithreaded and cross-platform ripper which works on Windows and Apple Mac OS both!

Step 1: Download & Install

Please download and install Handbrake to get started. At about 6MB, it shouldn’t take more than a minute.

Step 2: Launch the DVD Ripper

Put in your DVD and launch Handbrake. You should be greeted with an informative screen similar to the following:

By default, nothing is selected yet. There are a few options you can set, such as your preferred subtitle capture language and dubbing language preferences. I prefer the movies in original audio with English subs.

Step 3: Select the Source

I just popped in a Coen Brothers DVD, so when I click on the “Source” dropdown, it shows up there right away. Unfortunately, you can’t directly rip a commercial DVD this way. You need to dump it to disk with DVD Decrypter, after which you can select a DVD rip saved to a folder on your harddrive:

After some time (“Processing Title: 1 of 15…”) you will see the main screen populated with information. If you get stuck on the “processing title” bit, remember you need to open a folder you saved from DVD Decrypter (the decryption will take 20-30 minutes for a feature film).

Step 4: Choose a Title

Titles are like the chapters of a DVD. Usually there will be a single long title that contains the movie, like the 1 hr, 56 minute “Title 1″ I am selecting:

Step 5: Choose Output Settings

You have a lot to choose from. You can pick one of the Handbrake presets for iPod/iTouch/iPad, or customize one of your own. I’m going to use the “High Profile” setting to watch on my PC, but override the target file size to 2 CDs, or 1400 MB:

Step 6: Encode the video

Just click the “Start” button to kick things off, or “preview” to make sure you’re OK with the quality:

It’s going to take me about 52 minutes to encode this; on my i7 with 4 cores x2 hyperthreading, CPU usage is at 100%.

Finally…

If anything goes wrong, there’s an entire Handbrake community who can help you out. Why don’t you start by looking at their How To Request Support for HandBrake thread?

Want to rip a DVD? Ripping a DVD to xvid or divx avi is really quite easy, if you have the right tools. You’ll first need to download DVD decrypter and auto gordian knot (autogk). DVD decrypter allows you to rip the raw DVD video and audio data off of your disk drive, decrypt the CSS protection, and finally remove any other protection schemes, such as Macrovision. AutoGK is a package of codecs and a GUI interface that will take the raw DVD data through an AV processing pipeline to produce a single windows video file.

Step 1: RIP

Put in a DVD and launch DVD Decrypter. Choose IFO (Information File) mode:

Now make sure you’ve selected a destination for your files:

Now you need to find which program chain to rip (PGC). Pick the one that’s the longest, or in the case of a TV dvd, the episode you want to rip:

Everything’s set up. Just click the green arrow and wait about twenty minutes, after which you will have a set of files which look like this:

VTS_01_0.IFO
VTS_01_PGC_07 – Stream Information.txt
VTS_01_PGC_07_1.VOB

The whole ripping process shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

Step 2: ENCODE

Launch AutoGK and select the first .vob that you just ripped as an input file, and set an output file name:

Now you need to select audio (choose the first one) and subtitles, if any:

If you’re ripping a TV, set the preferred size to 350MB, if you’re ripping a movie, choose either 700MB or 1400MB, depending on your preference:

Finally, click on advanced settings and choose MP3 VBR 128kbs:

Then click “add job” and “start.” After all this, you’ll have a log that looks like the following:

[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] AutoGK 2.26
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] OS: WinXP (5.1.2600).2
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Job started.
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Input file: J:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_0.IFO
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Output file: J:\Output.avi
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Output codec: XviD
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Audio 1: Unknown language AC3 2ch
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Subtitles: none
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Format: .AVI
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Target size: 350Mb
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Custom audio settings: VBR MP3 with average bitrate: 128Kbps
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Started encoding.
[12/26/2005 9:07:27 AM] Demuxing and indexing.
[12/26/2005 9:08:30 AM] Processing file: J:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_PGC_04_1.VOB
[12/26/2005 9:08:30 AM] Source resolution: 720×480
[12/26/2005 9:08:30 AM] Found NTSC source.
[12/26/2005 9:08:30 AM] Source aspect ratio: 4:3
[12/26/2005 9:08:30 AM] Analyzing source.
[12/26/2005 10:28:40 AM] Source is considered to be hybrid (mostly NTSC).
[12/26/2005 10:28:40 AM] Looking for optimal hybrid thresholds.
[12/26/2005 10:28:45 AM] Found threshold of: 1.38
[12/26/2005 10:28:45 AM] Output will contain 38690 frames
[12/26/2005 10:28:45 AM] Decoding audio.
[12/26/2005 10:29:16 AM] Normalizing audio.
[12/26/2005 10:29:28 AM] Encoding audio.
[12/26/2005 10:31:57 AM] Audio1 size: 17,708,400 bytes (16.89 Mb)
[12/26/2005 10:31:57 AM] Overhead: 1,547,648 bytes (1.48 Mb)
[12/26/2005 10:31:57 AM] Video size: 347,745,552 bytes (331.64 Mb)
[12/26/2005 10:31:57 AM] Running compressibility test.
[12/26/2005 10:35:01 AM] Duration was: 3 minutes 4 seconds
[12/26/2005 10:35:01 AM] Speed was: 12.61 fps.
[12/26/2005 10:35:01 AM] Compressibility percentage is: 55.96
[12/26/2005 10:35:01 AM] Chosen resolution is: 560×416 ( AR: 1.35 )
[12/26/2005 10:35:01 AM] Predicted comptest value is: 73.79%
[12/26/2005 10:35:01 AM] Running first pass.
[12/26/2005 11:02:56 AM] Duration was: 27 minutes 55 seconds
[12/26/2005 11:02:56 AM] Speed was: 23.10 fps.
[12/26/2005 11:02:56 AM] Expected quality of first pass size: 76.04%
[12/26/2005 11:02:56 AM] Running second pass.
[12/26/2005 11:42:42 AM] Duration was: 39 minutes 46 seconds
[12/26/2005 11:42:43 AM] Speed was: 16.22 fps.
[12/26/2005 11:42:43 AM] Job finished. Total time: 2 hours 35 minutes 15 seconds
====================================================

Step 3: WATCH

You’re done. Delete all the non .avi files and enjoy the fruits of your ripping.