First you need to copy the DVD to your hard drive. I suggest you use the program \"DVDShrink\". When you copy the video track, make sure you configure the program to \"no compression\" or you may lose video quality as part of this transfer.
Then, feed the video to an encoder. I use \"StaxRip\" and I highly encourage you to, too. It\'s a bit more complex than an encode wizard but you can get some real good results out of it. StaxRip actually only coordinates the efforts of several programs, but as you configure StaxRip to encode it will figure out what other programs you need to download and assist you with downloading them. Very convenient!
BTW, while an h.263 video in an .avi container (created with DivX or Xvid) yields good quality, you will probably realize better quality from an h.264 codec. I suggest you use \"x264\" if you want better quality, which is part of StaxRip (as is Xvid and DivX). x264 can be used to generate a video to be stored in a .mp4 container (but not a .avi container). A .avi is fine, though, if you prefer it.