Need help archiving videos

[donnaduck]

Hello,
I am a complete novice on this topic and not very computer savvy but need to store videos in a digital archive database I am creating. Scanning documents, albeit mundane, will be the easiest part. The only experience I have copying videos is Mac the Ripper and Popcorn to make backup copies for my children's DVDs. I bought a DVD recorder to transfer VHS to DVD for physical copies, but now need to make compressed files for the digital archive.

I have a PowerBook G4 w/1 GH PowerPC and 1 GB SDRAM and a MacBook w/2.2 GH Intel Core 2 Duo.

I've been told that *.avi is the best file format for archiving and was recommended to use VLC. So I've gotten as far as downloading the software (v.0.8.6f) and reading some posts here and there in hopes of finding instructions on how to convert the videos from DVD to avi. Perhaps it's such a simple task that it need not be posted. Or perhaps I overlooked it in my overwhelmed state. Could you provide me with step by step instructions or point me to a past post?

Thanks.

[Tommo]

Take a look at Handbrake, that will convert straight from DVD to a number of different formats and sizes.

http://handbrake.fr/