HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
After a 14-month hiatus, a brand new development team, a project forked then unforked, and literally hundreds of revisions … a new (beta) version of HandBrake is available!

Supported sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software)
• PAL or NTSC
• AC-3, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks

Outputs:

• File format: MP4, AVI or OGM
• Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Misc features

• Chapter selection
• Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
• Integrated bitrate calculator
• Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
• Grayscale encoding