The VideoLAN Forums

This is very simple question I think, but searching through the command line help i cannot find information on what I wish to do.

Basically I wish to save video transcoded (?) to a file.

I can get vlc to play the video from command line, but I cannot figure to transcode.
I wish to transcode simple mpeg to avi, even mpg from a DVD to a mpeg file on HDD

Any help, or just pointers to more specific information much appreciated