SmartRipper & AutoGK is my favorite pair of utilities on my laptop.
SmartRipper goes from the DVD itself to a decrypted VOB files on your harddrive. AutoGK will go from the decrypted VOB files to an XViD file - you tell it the size you want. It [b]will[b/] take a while to run AutoGK - put aside a good 8 hours for a full length DVD.
SmartRipper should run fairly quickly, though.
Both of these can be found on
Doom9