OK... in this forum I can easily see that I'm a DVD-ripping "specialist". Here's the low down.
The process is very complicated on a Mac. There's no app to pop in a DVD and end up with a DivX movie. Here's the process.
1. Use DVD Extractor (in Classic), to decode the DVD... This app will extract the MPEG-2 video and the .ac3 audio.
2. Convert the .ac3 audio to aiff using mAC3dec (see below for link). If making a high quality movie (i.e. not VCD aka mpeg-1), encode the aiff to VBR MP3 in iTunes.
3. Convert the MPEG-2 to some other format using the free MPEG2Dec (available at
http://mm2d.3ivx.com/). For example, 3ivx is big on mac (you can't encode divx on mac). You could also convert it to mpeg-1 at this time to burn to VCD (playable in most set top DVD players).
4. Now, the tricky part... combine the audio and video. This is a bitch, and I STILL can't get it right often. In ripping from the DVD, the audio track and video track NEVER stay the same length. It takes a LOT of messing around to get it synced.
With a lot of luck, you're done.
If you're interested in more detailed instructions (and can't figure out what to do from the below links) let me know.
http://www.3ivx.com -- best quality codec available right now.
http://www.lukifer.com -- links to all of the above apps needed for ripping. Also tutorials.
http://divx.jamby.net -- contains a quicktime codec to play divx files you download.
http://connectix.com and
http://www.musiccity.com -- With Morpheus in VPC4, you can download ANY movie known to man (well, just about). We need someone to write a Mac OS X port ;-).
Good Luck,
-JoeCrow
P.S. and Admiral -- It's the MPAA Motion Picture Association of American =)