Ingest is the process of getting program content from whatever media it's on, in whatever format, into the VCPlayout playout? server.
Runtimes- see discussion under VCProgramming programming?.
Ripping DVDs The basic output of ripping a DVD is a .vob file, which contains at least one MP2 video stream and some number of audio streams. I've had good success using http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/ DVD Decrypter under windows. OTOH, there are many other programs that will also work. For Arisia (2009), the ripped .vob files were copied onto a firewire disk that was later connected to the playout server.
Which title and audio tracks on a DVD?
A single DVD may have many titles (Program Group Chains), and multiple audio tracks. Since the ripping process is more controllable than a simple DVD player, unless you rip the vob in it's entirety, you must specify exactly what to get (recommended). As most playout servers don't allow you to specify which audio track, it's safer to only rip the desired one. If you're selectively ripping, you can also remove the subtitle streams, which will slightly reduce the output file size.
Transcode to a common format?
This depends on the playout server and which encodings play with the lowest server load. The most likely transcoding would be from .vob to DV format for use with a DV output device.
Another reason to transcode is if you need to remove some audio tracks from a vob. This can be done with the wonderful tool http://www.ffmpeg.org/ ffmpeg using the -map option. RTFM.
Tapes
Ingesting content from analog tape required a video capture board and audio input, a decent tape playback machine, time to set everything up, and maybe some postprocessing (encoding, cleanup, etc). Avoid if possible.
YouTube and similar
Most content found on the Internet is half-size (320x240) which must be scaled up and generally doesn't look that good. There may be licensing issues, too. Avoid if possible.