Handbrake Lite is very fast and easy to use. At present, I believe it does not include the capability to encode to h.264. If you anticipate ever connecting your iPod to a TV or playing the video from your iTunes library on your computer, you may appreciate the improvement in quality afforded by h.264. It's probably more important, though, to match the framerate between source and output to avoid jerks in the motion, and Handbrake Lite does that for you. Check 0SEx for letting you do custom dividing/joining of your DVD video content. I like to use 0SEx to collect the chapters or titles I want combined, then I just drop them on No Frills at the highest bit rate setting so I can rely on them being playable on the iPod. Plus, they still look pretty decent if I watch them on the computer, especially if I use VLC instead of iTunes to play back.