The only option for a free program is handbrake. It's slow like others if your decoding from encrypted DVD's but if your movies are already decoded it's much quicker and it's simple and reliable to use.
I also bought the Elgato Turbo.264, which is a dongle that fits into your USB. It has it's own processor with in the USB dongle that it uses to encode the movies, allowing yours to do other things while the movie is getting converted.
It can be super fast, around 50 fps but it only encodes movies already ripped from DVD's, it can't copy DVD's direct from a disk if there encrypted but it does convert a huge amount of formats and quickly.
Both these programs give simple and easy to use menus and they can format to other devices such as PSP, iPod same as iPhone and larger quality and resolutions like the AppleTV. Follow the links for more info on both of these.
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file...a366f7e711046b