It's been awhile since I've done AV stuff, but I recall handbrake being a
pretty simple, but good tool for ripping the DVDs.  For streaming, depending
on aspect ratio of the source video, you might want something no larger than
720x480 (though probably smaller since this is more or less DVD resolution
at standard definition).  You'll want to use MPEG4 H.264 video compression
with hinted streaming.  For audio, I would recommend AAC at either 96 or 128
kb/s, depending on how fast your audience's broadband is.

I have run into problems with using the open source x264 video codecs in
that the hinted streaming doesn't work or the video looks stretched when
viewing it in VLC media player.  Quicktime in Windows may not even play some
streaming video files compressed with x264, but it's hard to say.  Apple's
codecs are more reliable and are packaged with Quicktime Pro.

Ethan

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Chris Markman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> <a href="http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/">Miro Video Converter</a> will
> do WebM if you want to be HTML5 fancy :) You'll need to rip the DVDs first
> though.
>
> Chris Markman
> Resource Library Coordinator
> Visual & Performing Arts
> Clark University
> 508.793.7481
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Brad Rhoads <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > You can probably use http://handbrake.fr/.
> >
> > ---------------------------
> > www.maf.org/rhoads
> > www.ontherhoads.org
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Browne,Ginny <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > > We have a bunch of DVDs that we converted from VHS tapes.  And now we
> > > would like to put them on the web, but we need some sort of converter
> > > from the DVD format to a web streaming file.  Has anybody done this??
> > > (They are all our own material, so we have no copyright issues to deal
> > > with.)
> > >
> >
>