My main obstacle, is I have a Mac, and am unsure which programs to use in order to produce a high quality rip.

For example, I want to upload my cd collection, but I don't know how to encode all of my CD's with LAME, as I only have only ever used iTunes for importing music onto my computer. Would ripping my music using the iTunes codec be acceptable?

As for movies, I want to upload my movies as video_ts folders, but again I am unsure what programs to use. Whenever I borrow a movie that I want to copy, I rip it to my HD using MacTheRipper, and then use Popcorn to burn just the main feature so I don't have to compress the movie too much. The only way I can think to upload a video_ts folder that has already been compressed to fit a standard DVD, is to burn the main feature using Popcorn as to have it compressed, and then rip it back off the DVD again, which doesn't seem all that proper to me.

Any help on getting started so I don't litter the torrent world with low quality crap would be much appreciated.

you are already on the right track considering you know that ripping then re-ripping is a bad idea

if you want to release compressed DVDs that will fit on a standard single-layer dvd-/+R then you should be able to just use disk utility to rip them to a standard .iso image, if they are protected as retail DVDs are, you will need a way to rip them which i'm not sure of one on a mac, i know that if you want to make a good rip of the DVD, that is a single video file, a great program to start on is handbrake, then if you want, switch to MEncoder :)