www.doom9.org is a good resource in addition to the ones already listed.
As for speed, we go through thousands and thousands of DVD rips. It can depend greatly on what codec you are using and the settings. With some settings on older computers you can be under 10 frames a second. Some machines here will run over 70fps. Running two passes that is a little faster than real time.
We generally extract the VOBs with DVD Decryptor, then make a .d2v project file with dvd2avi. The process after that can vary quite a bit. The no frills process after that is the standard Gordian Knot fare.
For intermediate encodes we still use gordian knot to make the AVISynth script and the open that in virtual dub to add filters.
These steps are only going to work if you are making an avi file.
This isn't the bible, just the way we usually do it around here (with a few extra tricks up our sleeves ;) ).