I want to download DVDs, which I made from home movies on analog tape, to my IMAC for editing and archival purposes. None of the files are protected. how can I accomplish this?

One possibility -> http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/easy-vhs-to-dvd/mac/overview.html?rTrack=b_eas yvhsmac

If these are video DVDs you'll have to use a 3rd party application to rip the movies from the DVDs. There are a number of apps that can do the job:

HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder

Free Mac Ripper Download - iskysoft.us

DVD Ripper For iMac - Wondershare.net

Free DVD Ripper from App Store

Handbrake is the one most recommended around here.

If they are home movie DVDs that are unprotected you do not need to "rip" them, simply copy the files across to your computer. You will then want to use a special application such as Handbrake to re-encode them to a smaller and more convenient format, though a media player such as VLC can play the DVD format files resident on your computer as they are (drag the video_TS folder to VLC).

but I can't find a way to save them to my hard drive?

If you have the disk image of these DVDs, what you want to do is easy. Do you have the disk images that made the DVDs?

You can do it one of two ways:

1 - use Disk Utility to make a disk image of each DVD disk, mount the disk on the desktop and run Handbrake on it.

2 - run Handbrake on each disk while it's in your optical drive and mounted.