I am using the copy your DVD tp Xvid guide and when I get to the stepusing VFAPIConver I get a message saying ????E:Swordfishswordfisht.d2v???????????, where "Swordfish" is name of movie and" swordfisht.d2v is the name of the file generated by DVD2Avi when I click on the add job button and select the file generated by Force film. I have no idea what this means and i am relitivly new at all of this.
Since your new to encoding, i suggest checking out doom9.org. There is an awesome program their called autogordian knot. Its a very simple, yet very effective program designed for noobs who dont know anything about video encoding. I encourage you to check out the program and try it out.
vfapiconverter is considered forbidden like the past 2 years....? if you want to frameserve use avisynth. autoguardianknot is the easiest thing for you like kingd said. you can also try virtualdubmod.