I'm having trouble. I've been reading how everyone's DVD rip is great and how also you shouldn't encode your DivX files. Well when you rip the DVD and all, the programs always ask you to save it as AVI but the only choice is DivX format. Am I missing something?

What programs are you using ?

I usually use SmartRipper, then DVD2AVI, THEN TMPGENC. I've used other programs before and they all only let me save as DivX or XviD

I thought smartripper just simply stripped vob files onto your hard drive.
For dvd2avi, you need to hit "save project" then it will create a d2v file and a wav file. Then insert both the d2v file and wav file into tmpenc and load kwags template

Load the vob files and save as project. then load d2v in tempence or fitcd