VOB(DVD) conversion Need Help Please

[tonkatoy42]

I'm new to all this I have been using Slysoft to rip my DVD's down to put on hard drive to watch them with media players, but each movie takes a minimum of 4 GB. I would like to rip them down to mpeg 4 or xvid, or something that would take them down to a smaller size, but at the same time I want to keep them 16 x9 if possible with best sound possible. Everytime I do one it comes out high quality but smaller screen size. If I try to stretch screen size it loses quality. I don"t really understand the bitrate conversions and technical stuff. I do realize that most of the programs rip them down to play on portable devices.

So my question is can anyone explain to me or tell me what compression to choose and what settings to choose to get movies down to 2GB or less and still retain picture size and picture and sound quality. Or link me to post here that would explain it in converting for dummies terms.
Thanks Bill

[jagabo]

I keep the same frame size as the DVD (cropping away any black borders) then encode as h.264 video with 16:9 flags. I keep the original AC3 audio. I usually use DgIndex, AviSynth, and the x264 CLI encoder. But you can do it more easily with a simple front like Xvid4PSP. Using one of the presets like "x264 Q21 DXVA HQ Film" will typically shrink you video down to 1/3 the VOB size without losing much quality. If you want higher quality you can customize the Q value or use one of the lower Q presets. The file will be larger but probably still significantly less than the VOBs.