digifan,
Gordian Knot contains all the smaller programs you need to do the whole job ... (Smart Ripper, DVD2AVI, ...)
http://www.doom9.org/ - another good site for info ...
If you want to encode to mpg, i would go smartripper > dvd2avi > tmpegenc ...
send me an email if you have any questions,
mikey AT 219Content dot com
csumi