DVDFab Platinum or Gold, CloneDVD2 and DVDShrink are all popular programs for compressing your dvd video backups. DVD2One slightly less so, though I’ve heard many praise the results you can get with it. Shrink is the free one of those, and does a pretty good job for a transcoder, despite the fact that development stopped on it almost 4 yrs ago now.
You can probably put me in the lunatic fringe group who require the highest quality possible for their compressed backups, but with the faster computers that are available now, you can use DVDRebuilder and the HC encoder in a reasonable amount of time. It takes me about 60-80 minutes to backup a movie using DVDRebuilder anymore, so that is not too high a price in time for me. I’m using a Core2 Duo machine that is only mid range speed…2.7ghz. Procoder set on Mastering level is a fairly slow encoder, but it does the job in that time frame also.
At least I’m not so crazy as to insist on dual layer for everything.
Or splitting to two single layer dvds for all backups.
In the end, you have to decide for yourself what quality is acceptable. Many view backups as a temporary fix…something that can be remade if necessary. I’d just rather do it right the first time.
You should try the free version of DVDRebuilder. Use the HC encoder and you will get excellent results. The free version is not as versatile as the commercial one and lacks some options I normally use. If I remember correctly, it won’t give you the option to do the main movie only, so you have to rip it to the hard drive in that configuration before compressing. Neither version of Rebuilder comes with a decryption/ripping function, so you have to use it in conjunction with other tools, like DVDFab HD Decrypter, or AnyDVD.