Dvd To Divx/xvid Rippers: Which Is Best And Easiest To Use

As you've probably experienced, DVDs bought off the street here tend to have a very short lifespan, even when stored properly. Many of the ones I once watched without any problem no longer play in any drive. Sometimes, you can even see how the surface has decayed (I'm not talking of scratches). I guess these don't go through the complete manufacturing process and end up lacking some kind of coating or whatever. So they destroy themselves. Hey Disney... you haven't invented the self-destructing DVD. It was here before

Anyway, I want to keep a copy of my best DVDs. I chose not to burn them to other DVDs because I don't trust writable DVDs much either. I want to rip them to DiVX or XViD and store the rips on a big HD (ok, maybe two HDs).

Although I'm a computer guy, I'm no bitrate/I-frame/chroma optimizer/BVOP sensitivity/motion detection etc. expert. I would love to learn all about this, but I don't have quite the time. So I'm looking for a DVD ripper program that is a good compromise between 'DVD ripping for dummies' and the programs with pages of options understandable to digital video gurus only (unfortunately most of the freeware ones fall into this category).

I've tried many: 1-click DVD ripper gives more control than some others (ability to crop image etc.), but is kind of unstable and has no documentation at all. Magic DVD ripper really doesn't give enough control and no video feedback of the encoding. ImTOO has been pathologically unstable in my experience.

There are so many of them. Anyone with a comparable level of (non-) expertise in digital video can share his/her experience with other products and maybe recommend some?

Thanks in advance,

--Lannig