sound/video question

sound: i have 5 game servers and im wanting to rip the sound off of a few dvds of mine, and take peices out of it to play on the game server what would be the best software to do this?

Video: what would be the best software to rip my dvds to my hard drive, i back my dvds up on hard drive because its easier and quicker to load a avi rather then start up a dvd. Also all of mymovies i have backed up over the years are either divx or xvid, how would i play those on mac?

Sound: Audio Hijack Pro. $32, and yes it's 1 to 1 recording, so it takes as long to record as it does to play, but it's very handy and effective.

Video: Handbrake. Rips to iPod format too. Free.

cool thanks, and audio hijack will allow me to cut up audio and hand brake will allow me to export audio?

Well, no not exactly. You'd use Audio Hijack to capture the audio from the DVD player. Then you would use either GarageBand, or my preference because I know how to use it well and it's simple though powerful Audacity, which is also free. You load the audio from the 'stream' you recorded, crop out what you don't want and save it to .wav or .mp3 or whatever you'd like. There are tutorials on the website providing audacity. Google will help you out here.

Handbrake rips the video and audio, and would be used just to rip the DVD. You can then record the audio with AHP from either the DVD as mentioned in the above paragraph, or from the resultant .mp4 or whatever you've told handbrake to rip to. Record. Think fair use and all that for the MPAA and RIAA nazis. I also use AHP to record songs I buy from iTunes to 'free' them of the DRM that is on them, though might be taking advantage of those DRM free songs offered by the store.

Hint: If you can hear it on your Mac, Audio Hijack pro can record it. Once it's recorded you can do a plethora of things with it.

Here is an example of a little thing I made with AHP recorded audio and video ripped from a DVD I own. (Credit to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and NASA.)