Retrieving snippets of video and audio from DVD to create file on MAC?

[sammie]

Sorry, this isn't necessarily an audiophile question...more of a please help me with a presentation question.... but this may help someone some day pull HD audio off of a DVD.....so I justify it's relevance! --- Thanks in advance to those who answer..

 

So, I'm trying to retrieve about 10 minutes of video and audio from the DVD, Something About Mary, (the pork and beans scenes) to store as a video file on my Mac to incorporate into a presentation on male genital trauma suffered from zippers. Yep, no joke here. Can I retrieve the video? If so, does anyone know of a cheap way to do it? I'd rather not pay $$$ just to retrieve 10 min of vid. Thanks again.

 

[souptin]

Sorry for coming over all pompous, but please look into the legality of using movie clips for educational purposes before you go public with your presentation. It may be considered a breach of copyright.

 

As to the technicalities, there are various programs that will decrypt DVDs, other programs which will encode into a variety of resolutions and formats, and still others which will allow you to extract clips. Some programs will do all three to some extent. Prices go from free to $$$, ease of use and features vary a lot, not necessarily in proportion to price.

 

My first recommendation would be to look at Handbrake (handbrake.fr) in conjunction with VLC media player (videolan.org), both of which are free and I believe will do the whole thing for you. VLC is only needed because (afaik) it includes the dvd decryption libraries which are no longer part of the latest version of Handbrake, although it's a handy program to have in it's own right for ad-hoc playback of both music and video.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Handbrake will allow you to take video from the DVD and will convert it into H.264 or MP4 format suitable for iTunes use - I've never managed to restrict it to just a snippet though you cab select a particular chapter.

 

Another piece of software that might be if use is MacTheRipper which will allow you to copy a DVD to your HardDrive. Once ripped, then using MPEG stream clip will allow you to cut a portion of the video - both these are free software though MPEG stream clip requires the Apple MPEG2 plug in for Quicktime that's £15 / $20 from memory.

 

Please note that these applications circumvent copy restrictions so maybe illegal. As the first reply commented what you are planning to use the clip for probably breaks copyright restrictions.

 

Eloise