Mutt, it used to be a 3 step process to do all of that but now you can get one program. If I were you I would go to
http://www.zdnet.com and look around for dvd ripping and copying utilities.
Back in the olden days you used to have to use Smart Ripper to rip the DVD then flask MPG to encode into AVI then edit and encode to your file format of choice.
Try to find one of the programs that does all that by itself.