DVD Ripping, editing and Reburning with Maximum quality

[reccos]

I'm trying to rip a few scenes off a couple of Christmas show DVD's, re-edit them to fade between each other and hold a freeze frame, etc., and then burn the final back to a DVD without losing a bunch of quality (I need this to be blown up on 20' projector. So far I have used MactheRipper to rip the chapters that I need and I get relatively small .vob files (are they the full quality?). Secondly I have tried to convert those files to a .mov or compatable file for use in iMovie (This is where I believe the main quality loss is, (also I have FinalCut Express but I'm not that proficient in it). After the editing then I export to iDVD and burn (I've also been told that the type of DVD could affect the quality as well, I was using Verbatim for the preliminary copies, but I'll probably use a higher quality Apple DVD). If you have any suggestions at all I would appreciate hearing them.

Thanks All!
reccos

[Baldrick]

Please don't cross post. http://forum.videohelp.com/topic375710.html