Video Conversion and encoding is confusing. I made some notes for myself for practical conversions and encoding. Maybe they are useful to you, too.

The main question from a target standpoint are:

• What is the target usage? (DVD, TV viewing, Web, etc.)
• What size (pixels) including aspect ratio
• What codecs can be used

DVD video usually is the highest wanted, although the new HDTV format may change that. For reference, DVDs are encoded at:

• Video: MPEG-2, 720x480, 29.97 fps, 9800 kbps
• Audio: AC3, 48kHz, 192 kbps

You can certainly take the video size down, but you'll want to keep the same aspect ratio or the result will look funny.

Supposedly, an excellent video compression format is Xvid. However, it isn't default on the Windows platform, so you need a codec for it. It offers excellent compression for excellent quality. Here are a few possible formats:

• Great: xVid 29.97fps 2167kbps; MP3 48kHz 121 kbps (KLCP AVI)
• Good: xVid 1200/100 kbps;
• Fine: xVid 1000/96

Toolsets:

• DVDDecrypter (free) - Allows you to copy almost any DVD to your hard drive. If you have problems, try using DVDFabDecrypter and/or AnyDVD. May no longer be supported.
  
• DVDFabDecrypter - Does what DVDDecrypter does and a little more (dealing with new protection such as used by Disney among others)
• AnyDVD - allows you to bypass any encryption on the DVDs. This on works very well.
  
• DVD Shrink - Allows you to re-encode or re-author DVDs
  
• Menu Shrink - Allows you to shrink DVD menus to save space when re-encoding.
  
• MediaCoder - open source video converter for advanced users
• SUPER - open source video converter for novice users
• VOB2MPG - changes VOB files to MPG2 files; works most of the time
  

Other Tools I've heard of:

• TitleSetBlanker_v095
• DVD-Rebuilder v.77
  • with CCE SP v2.70.02.00
  • with AviSynth v2.5.5(DGDecode.dll)
• MenuEdit v2.3.0
• ImgTool Classic_0.91.4