Last night I downloaded trial versions of both DVDxDV ($20) and Cinematize ($129). Here's the report.
DVDxDV
DVDxDV is for Macs only. I downloaded and installed it into my MacBook with no trouble. The MacBook slot loader can't take miniDVDs, so I had to use my PC to make a regular-sized copy of the source miniDVD using Roxio DVD Suite. Then, on my MacBook, I started up DVDxDV and inserted the DVD. The program opened the DVD with no trouble, but the audio and video tracks were out of synch. The built-in and online help menus suggested this was a bug in previous versions that has now been fixed, yet I still had the problem in the latest version. The help menu suggested I select "de-interlace" as this sometimes fixes out-of-synch audio/video. I tried this but it didn't work.
I went ahead and selected a segment and saved it in Quicktime format (the only choice available) to my desktop. Then I tried to open it with iMovie, but iMovie could not open it. iMovie gave an error message saying something like "unable to open file".
I fiddled for half an hour and tried various things, but I could not make this program work. It's a shame because the user interface is clean, operations are simple and the price is cheap. Maybe it would work with some other DVDs, but it didn't work with mine.
Cinematize
Cinematize is available for both Mac and PC. I downloaded the PC version, since my PC DVD drives accept miniDVDs (unlike the MacBook). Having Cinematize on my PC saves me the step of having to copy the source miniDVD to a regular-size DVD for MacBook use.
I downloaded and installed the program with no trouble. It recognized the source DVD. The user interface is clean but far less intuitive than that of DVDxDV. I had to spend 10 minutes reading the Help menu manual, then during operation, had to constantly check back to make sure I was doing the right thing. The basic version feels almost like a "Pro" version. I felt lost in a sea of video and audio acronyms, formats, ratios, codecs and technical choices explained to clarify their differences from each other, but with no indication why a person would want to do one or the other. You kind of have to be an AV head beforehand I guess, and I am not, though I learned a lot and next time could do it all much quicker.
Eventually, I muddled through and successfully marked and selected a segment and saved it to Quicktime format. This program will also save in over a dozen other formats, including for iPod.
Then I saved the resulting 3 files (a video file, an audio file, and an envelope file) to a USB memory stick and transferred them to my MacBook's desktop. iMovie was able to open and edit them with no trouble. This program works for me.
Conclusion:
Cinematize is rather expensive, but it might be worth it if I am really going to edit these miniDVD home movies. It's a shame that DVDxDV didn't work for me, it's so much easier to use. I'll play with it some more to see if I can figure out what is wrong.