There is no shortage of reasons why people need to rip DVDs and convert video to other formats like AVI, MPEG, MP4, DivX, WMV and other common video types. One common reason is you have home movies on your DVD player that you want to carry around with you on an iPod or cell phone. To do this, you have to first convert the DVD video and audio files to the video format supported by your device. In the case of an iPod, that would be the MP4 format. With a cell phone, it could be MP4, but it could also be 3GP.

There might also be a scenario where you want to also share the video you have on a DVD with friends online. Video sharing sites like Google Video or YouTube cannot accept DVD video directly. In order to upload it, you need to convert the video first to a common video format (like MPEG, AVI or MP4) then upload it to YouTube.

It's fairly obvious from these two common example situations that there are many legitimate needs for a program to convert DVD to various formats. The next question is how do you do it?

That part of the process is actually pretty easy. You just need to download a type of software called DVD converter or DVD ripper. There are hundreds of different titles on the market today that you could choose from. Most work pretty much the same way.

The initial step is to locate, download and install the program on your PC or Mac computer. Most of the companies providing this type of software offer free trial or demo versions, so you can try them out before you buy. After you have downloaded and installed the software, you will want to run it and input the DVD you wish to rip or convert into your computer's DVD-ROM drive.

In the software interface, you will select the video and audio files from the DVD that you wish to convert or rip to your computer. No matter if you want to use the video on your computer or on a portable device, you will first have to rip the files to your computer.

After you have selected the files to be converted or ripped, you will need to select a location on your computer for the files to be stored. Then you will choose the output video type. This is where you select the video format you want the new video to be in and then press the start button.

This is all there is to it. Depending on the size of the files you are ripping, the process can take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour or more.