Ripping DVDs

doom9.net has what you seek.

 

OK some things you can do will require 3 free programs: (these are for Windows, not sure about Mac)

Get a program called DVDFAB. You can google it. You can buy it but it does have a free basic version that does rip entire DVD's but the free version does not compress them to burn to a single layer DVD. If you want to burn to a single layer DVD for backup, then you have to get another 2 programs

DVDShrink and DVD Decrypter. These 2 programs work together to "shrink" or compress the movie down to a size that will fit on a single layer DVD. Use DVDShrink first and you will get an option to burn the dvd with DVDDecrypter right in the DVDShrink menu.

These options listed above are for ripping and burning to a blank DVD. You stated that you wanted to set them on a hard drive. Most DVD movies rip into a series of individual files in a folder that is 8gb which is huge. You can use another program which is a bit complicated to use until you get the hang of it. Google HandBrake. This program converts video into a "mp4" which is the movie put into a single file instead of multiples in a folder.

I have several 2 hour home movies on DVD that I have ripped into .mp4 with sizes about 1.5 gb instead of 8gb which saves a LOT of room on the hard drive. I know a few drivers who have 500gb portable hard drives and have 200-300 movies and TV shows in mp4 saved on them. If they kept them as DVD folder, they wouldn't have half the movies on thier drives that they do now. There are others programs that are a bit easier to use but I like Handbrake.

You can use all these programs and like I said they are free and will work for what you want to do. There are a whole bunch of different choices out there but I find these 4 work for me and do what I need to get done.

Hope this helps

 

This. Or you if you want to spend more you could go with DvdShrink or Nero.

 

DVD FAB works great and is very easy to use they are now at version 6 which is suppose to be able to burn blu ray too

 

Vlc Media player. It's basically an open source (free) replacement for Windows media player. It will play any video file you load into it, no need to download and install codecs, it even makes a pretty good attempt at scratched DVDs , and partially downloaded video files. You can get it here.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

What a lot of people don't know, is that it's also a pretty good DVD ripper. You have to burrow into the menus, but it will do it, and does a great job. Here is a guide:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2696/how-to-rip-dvds-with-vlc/

 

My god, that's probably the worst combination I've ever seen. I cringe. Cringe I tell you.

 

If you use avi it strips all the usefulness that h.264 has. Divx or xvid works with avi. h.264 goes with mkv or mp4.