What is the easiest and best way to make backup copies of retail DVDs
using a Mac OS X system with a superdrive.  I have tried using a
program called "Fast DVD Copy 3" but the backup movie would not play
on normal DVD players (just my laptop).  I am trying to get working
backups because of an experience i had recently where my room was
broken into and most of my 80 DVDs were stollen, so that this doesnt
happen again i want to make backups that actually work.  I am not an
expert on this so i need an easy solution that will make working
backups.  I have heard of many different ways that are supposed to
work but dont so please only provide ones that are known to work.

The legality of this is questionable, since you would have to decrypt
the encoded content.

Additionally, most store bought DVD's are around 9 gig in size, while
the drive in your Mac can only burn about 4.2 gig.

Given that, tools I have heard work include:

OSEx for extraction

mac3dec for sound conversion

DiVA for video conversion

Toast Platinum for burning.

The general idea would be to extract the digital data from the disc
using OSEx, and either convert it to a smaller format for archiving,
or burn directly to disc using Toast.