Not that I would ever do such a thing ...
 

but hypothetically, if one wanted to make copies of one's DVDs to one's computer harddrive in .avi format for the sake of convenience, which software would best accomplish this task? (And which codec would you recommend for formatting?)

Re: Not that I would ever do such a thing ...
 

Divx is a good codec, but I've never ripped a DVD, so I'm not sure how to produce a good Divx.

MPEG 4.

Divx is the standard. There are others, but the best results seem to come from Divx. Check out the web site to start with.

Warning...it takes a really long time to do a good rip, depending on your computer power, and sometimes you have to fiddle with the audio to make it line up properly with the video.

That's something I've wondered about as I've started seeing portable players that will play video too: where will the videos come from? Having toted a laptop and a holder of DVD on trips to the west coast, I certainly see the attraction of an integrated player, even if the screen is a little small. But not if I have to spend hours ripping stuff. Ah well, I'm sure it will improve as time goes on.

De-facto standard free toolset:

SmartRipper (to get the files)
Flask (MPEG2 to AVI)
VirtualDub (for further editing, if desired)
AVISynth (for advanced further editing)

DIVX (the standard codec, free but not open)
XVID (the other standard, open source forked from DIVX when it was briefly open)
HuffYUV (lossless codec, if you're going to do further editing)

De-facto standard web site:
http://www.doom9.org/

As for speed, I get around 2-3 frames per second on an 800 MHz P3. So obviously, I don't do this very often. :3eye:

And for SteveDallas: The Archos video players with hard drive require you transcode movies before copying them over. You can probably copy a VCD directly, but DVDs will need to be converted.

If that's too much trouble, just get a really stinkin' huge HD for your laptop, and copy the DVD files directly to it. (SmartRipper should do nicely.) Full quality, no effort.

I found this dude's site to be very helpful.

Super DVD Ripper is Alright

Any thoughts on the best way to just extract the soundtrack?

Go to that website I posted, and do the first two steps ...

Smartripper will remove the movie from the DVD to your hard drive.

Then run DVD to AVI ... this will provide you with separate video and audio tracks.

The audio track will be a .WAV file. It's playable on the computer, I tried it.

Will this do?

Yep, I gave up too soon. (I had just looked thru step 1.) It's be nice to have an option to just rip the sound (since that would presumably be faster), but I can work with this. Thanks.

One stop solution.

#1 DVD Ripper

http://www.dvdtox.com/

Stick in your DVD, open the folder with the files, pick your settings, start ripping, go eat, come back, enjoy.

Ahhh ... but they are charging money, and my horrible, long way around method is free ...

Also, my hypothetical primary use of the CDs would be for viewing at work, where there are no DVD players available, but there are CD drives on the computer, for which we do not have admin privilege and therefore cannot update the codecs to make the more highly compressed formats playable.

(Incidentally, I did find several all-in-one stick the DVD in and push the button versions during my initial search, but the "free trial" is typically "will rip 20 minutes or 10% of your source and laugh at you for trying.")