For what it's worth I use AOA DVD Ripper. You can get it from this site.
To rip a movie for iTunes it takes about as long as the movie is to watch. Kind of painful but really nice once you have it ripped. The tool compresses the video to about 5-600 mb depending on movie length.
Ditto to what First said. AoA makes a great prodcut that is easy to use and very intuative. You may just want to invest in a portable hard drive too. The movies will fill up yours pretty quick.
Handbrake. Google it and it should be the first link. I think they have both windows and mac versions, i've only used the mac version, so if you have windows i dont know how good it is but it works flawlessly for my mac. they also give you tutorials on how to use the proper settings and stuff when u rip the dvd.
If your movies are already in a file format (ie, AVI, MPEG, etc..) then you should look up a file converter on Google. Not sure of any names, sorry cant help there.. but you need to convert the file into an MP4..
just downloaded handbrake for my mac. put van wilder in and clicked start. i dont really know what its doing but i have a progress bar. i guess its ripping it to my computer. is it ripping it to ipod size?
When you use handbrake, on the right hand side there should be a windows that will let you select what you would like to optimize the video for. You should be able to select iPod. It works great!