I know you said "software wise" but I for some reason must start with hardware.. If you don't have any special hardware, just get a tv tuner/capture card (such as Miro/Pinnacle PCTV Studio). Those cards usually already have some proggies for capturing tv signal (hook up your vcr with the card), and most of them capture it into avi format..
Then you will need a program which will export *.avi to mpeg, try searching google for Avi2Mpeg or Avi2mpg, I'm not sure how it's called (small and free program, not much options)..
For capturing to avi I recommend you VirtualDub, it's free and has extremely many options, and it's quicker than most of other big/fancy/expensive applications. If I remember well, both avi2mog and virtualdub have batch process option..
I guess that you can also do all you need to do with a program such as adobe premiere or Ulead Video "Something"
, but no need to spend a lot of money if you don't have really alot of stuff to do.