Software & File format for release?

[sprocket]

I, like many others here have been leeching movies from links on this site. I appreciate the hard work of all involved and I have added to my collection of movies which runs into hundreds of titles.

I have some quite rare movies that have not been posted that I would like to start contributing. My source will be from dvd but what software should I use to covert it and to which file format avi or xvid etc?

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thank you.