Hi all,
I used to use Nero Recode... This is a simple tool without many advanced settings, is there some other, more "correct" way? I do not want to go too deep into this, I just want to make a good quality rip without a lot of hard work...

stick with nero way then.

you may also try; megui, staxrip

(megui is not really for beginners)

megui wiki
http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/Guides/Basic_Guide

Thanks.
I guess, I'll stick to Recode then. I've read that it provides decent quality and I know all its settings already.

sure it does, x264 might get you sligtly better quality this days (at an expense of a lot of experimenting and reading), however i suggest you do a comparision on few of your favorite encoding type of videos.

some of my experiments are here;
http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php
(flv files are usually vp6, mp4 files are usually x264)