What is the lowest common denominator for ripping video DVDs such that the resulting file is more than likely playable on old computers with old operating systems and software?

My desire is to use a USB stick or CD/DVD and enjoy my ripped musical videos when I travel and work at a client's computer. Many of these typical office machines are not intended for multimedia usage. I can expect only the bare stock installation of any media player.

I'm guessing the lowest common denominator for old machines would be a generic Windows Media Player (WMP) 6.4. Therefore how do I convert modern AVIs (MPEG4 video, MP3 audio) to a format that a legacy WMP 6.4 is likely to play? I have to convert both the video MPEG4 and audio MP3 streams to something WMP 6.4 will play. I accept that I might suffer some loss of video quality and that is okay.

Using ffmpeg to look at an AVI that I am able to play with WMP 6.4, I notice the video stream is msvideo1 and the audio is pcm_u8 mono. Perhaps that combination is a low enough denominator to start, although I would want the audio in stereo, not mono. The trick then is knowing the appropriate ffmpeg options. Therein is where I am stuck and somewhat clueless.

I have ffmpeg installed and many other multimedia packages. I am comfortable with using ffmpeg but am open to using other packages.

Yes, I can install the Windows version of VLC Player on my USB or DVD to play the AVI, but my challenge here is mastering some nominal conversion concepts.

Thanks much.

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Additional Background:

I successfully used K9Copy to rip one of my video musical DVDs. The resulting file was an MPEG4 video and MP3 audio file in an AVI container. I can play the AVI on my Slackware 12.1 box, which is my primary box in my office, and on another person's XP box (WMP 11?). I could not play the AVI on a Windows 2000 (W2K) box with WMP 9 --- the audio would play but there was no video. I could not play either the video or audio on a Windows NT4 box with WMP 6.4. The NT4 box with WMP 6.4 had WMP 9 codecs installed. I have a generic W2K installed in a virtual machine, which came with WMP 6.4. Same result as the NT4 box.

I used ffmpeg to convert the AVI to WMV. Same results.

I used ffmpeg to convert the file to MP3 and OGG. I then only get the audio, which for a musical DVD is acceptable, but I would prefer the video too. On both the NT4 and virtual W2K I can play the converted MP3 versions.

I realize the fundamental challenge is not having the proper codecs installed. Because I do not own these other computers I cannot install the codecs at will. I started wondering how to resolve that challenge by converting the DVD AVI to a "low level" file format that would be useable on older stock Windows machines, which are common.

Of course, when I play these "lowest level" ripped DVDs on an old Windows box, I can brag a little how I ripped the video on my Slackware box....

A better option would be to have something like Portable Apps on your usb stick, you could then have vlc and media player (plus a host of other apps) that you can run without touching anything on the host machine. I used to do this all the time when working on other machines. Take a look here: http://portableapps.com/apps

Thanks for the link. Interesting site.

However, as I mentioned in my original post, VLC is an option, yet I want to learn how to convert.

I've been giving this a go again this afternoon to no avail. I've been trying various ffmpeg options to convert to mpeg1video so WMP 6.4 has a chance to play. No success yet.

You can use vlc to stream to a file (search for vlc ripping dvd - maybe also 'backup').
A typical DVD results in a file about 8GB though.