Best way to rip a DVD?

Well I'm helping someone try to rip a DVD so they can edit parts out and just get the clip they want out of the movie. I'm doing this for him because he is a professor and he wants to put the clip into a powerpoint presentation. He downloaded a program called handbrake but can't quite get the settings to work correctly and produce good video quality.

So is there a really efficient way to do this? Or does anyone have any experience with this?

Note: This is for educational purposes.

I don't know if this will work too, but once on a movie I used Virtual DUB to cut out a part in the beggining of a movie.
Might work too.

Download Camtasia.
Play movie.
Record desired part of movie.
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