For you first purpose, burning avi to blank DVD:First, please check if your standalone DVD player supports playing avi file. If yes, then you may use your general burning software like Nero to burn the Avi file to a blank CD or DVD directly. If not, you should first convert the avi file to DVD format, then you may use our Ideal DVD Copy to burn it from hard drive to blank DVD directly. You may search "avi to dvd" by google to see which one can finish this job.
Second purpose, burning DVD to hard drive:In fact, since your final purpose is to watching the DVD on your standalone DVD player, you needn't rip it to hard drive first. Just use Ideal DVD Copy to burn it to blank DVD directly. Thus you may get the same quality as the original one. You may refer to
http://www.idealdvdcopy.com/copy-dvd-to-dvd.htm to learn how to do that.
If you still like rip it to a single file to your hard drive first and your stand-alone player also supports avi, you may use Ideal DVD to Avi converter to rip the whole DVD to avi, then you may use other burning software to burn it to a blank CD or DVD. (but I don't suggest you do like this, since after converting, the quality will be reduced, and finally you want to appreciate it on your player not the computer.)
As for the ripping time, before answering, we need to understand what you're doing, converting avi to dvd, burning dvd to dvd or burning avi to dvd? The time of different task is different. You you're burning a DVD from hard drive to blank DVD, then it will be finished at about 20 minutes. Tell me the format of the movie, and what're doing, and which software you're using, then we'll give you more exact reply.