UPDATE: Ripping legal video from DVD
EDTECH Editor-Eiffert
[If there ever were an EdTech FAQ, this answer should probably get put
in it!]
Thanks to all those who responded. For whatever reason, I had to have
the project done long before most people responded. Many people who
responded didn't seem to have a clear idea of what I was asking, so they
often gave partial good answers. (And special thanks to CloneAD which
I'll get into more at the end of this message.)
So, in a nutshell:
I have some "home made" DVDs. I need to get some short excerpts from
them for training purposes. You can not load up a DVD in Windows Movie
Maker (or Adobe Premiere, or whatever) and trim a clip. This is what I
needed to do.
Previously, I would have had to plug the s-video output of a DVD player
into a media converter (I have a Sony DA2, no longer made, but another
person suggested a similar product made by Canopus) and then import that
video over the firewire. (Or whatever analog to digital media converter
you happen to have. Dazzle is another named possibility.) This involves
a big loss of quality.
Another suggestion from someone was to play the DVD on my computer, and
use "camtasia" or a screen grabbing program to re-record the video. This
too is an unacceptable analog to digital conversion.
What I needed to do was to "rip" the digital files from the DVD, and
re-encode them at a different resolution and bitrate (transcode) with a
different compression. (AVI works well for the intermediate rip.
Although it is large, it is minimally compressed and as such has minimal
degradation when you transcode the final product. Ultimately, I wanted
Windows Media files for use in PowerPoint.)
Several Mac users suggested that good programs exist for their platform
(I don't have access to a Mac) including Handbrake. One user suggested a
website that might have software like what I needed: www.dvdhelp.com.
In reality, I found the Handbrake homepage, then used Google's reverse
lookup to see who linked to it, and looked for "how to" guides on doing
what I needed to do with an emphasis on Windows, not Mac. After trying
several products I didn't like that wanted too much money (>$50), didn't
work, or were just generally scary looking, I came across a solution
that worked for me - CloneAD's CLAD DVD ripper:
http://www.clonead.co.uk/
I needed the cladDVD.NET, avi.NET, AVISynth, and XviD downloads from
their download pages.
The other programs would be needed if I needed to further modify,
compress and re-encode the DVDs (i.e. COPY them) back to other media. I
didn't install them, because that isn't my goal here.
Another poster suggested the DIVX codec. I chose XviD because it was
free, although DIVX probably would offer me greater re-compression. (My
clips are short, so it's not a big deal.) DIVX is not free. It is also
just a codec - it doesn't perform the "whole" function of ripping and
converting these files. It just does the final job.
OK. So, put the DVD in the drive, and run the CLADDVD.NET program. It is
pretty self explanatory, but it basically copies the VOB files from the
DVD to your hard drive. The documentation tells you to do this rather
than manually drag and drop the VOB files, as they may not be
"sequentially linear" on the DVD. (i.e. You may get various video
segments out of order.) It is a reasonably quick process, but takes a
lot of drive space.
I suggest you rename the file at this point. Since the same device made
my VOB files, they all had the same name, and I got filename conflict
errors unless I renamed or deleted the files when I started the second
DVD.
Then, run the AVI.NET program. You will have to find the VOB file left
from the previous program after you click the source button, and if you
renamed them like I suggest, you probably found them at the root of your
C:\ drive. At this point, it takes a while as the program starts to
pre-process files for a preview. Give it time. When the preview starts,
you can click the Video/Audio/Subs button and change output bitrates,
sizes or frames - but it's fine to let it use the default settings.
Once the preview starts, click Add Job, and then Start. This confused me
a bit, as Start couldn't be used until Add Job had been clicked.
Go away for a long time. My 3ghz P4 HT takes about 2:1 (2 minutes to
encode each minute of video). Maybe a bit longer. It makes two passes.
In my case, 50 minute videos took 2+ hours to convert.
CLAD suggests an AVI editor, but I found that Windows Movie Maker worked
just fine for "trimming" the clips.
Start WMM. Then FILE/IMPORT and find your AVI. (I uncheck the "make
clips" so my AVI is one long file, rather than billions of little ones
to deal with.) Drag it down to the timeline below.
Move the slider to where you want to split your clip, then under the
preview window on the right, find the two razor blades and click. (You
can click on and delete the part you don't want. Don't worry, it's not
gone from your hard drive, just off the timeline.) Move to the end of
the part you want, and use the blade again.
Now out of an hour video, I have my 45 second clip! Choose FILE/SAVE
MOVIE FILE, or just "save to my computer" under Finish Movie. Put it
wherever you put your training video files. (I have a Training folder in
My Documents with a Video and Audio folder that I throw this stuff in.)
Now I can pretty easily import it into PowerPoint as a full screen
slide, or put a button on my slide which links to the file and launches
my external player if I need to do it that way.
I used WMM because it is easy, and already on my computer. But if I
needed to bring clips together, title them, fades, etc I probably would
have used something more powerful. (Again, I use Premiere - but no sense
doing that in this case.)
And, I ended up with very high quality finished media clips that I was
happy to use in my presentations. It was, however, WAY more work than I
really wanted to do to just get a couple of short legal video clips.
Shame on the RIAA for not letting mainstream tools like WMM or Premiere
just "import" the video straight up. ;)
Many thanks to the creators of CloneAD who before this email don't even
know they helped me out in a bind - so in addition to my thanks, I
encourage all of you thousands of educators around the world who may
have this same "issue" to check out their product. I suppose I should
even find a way to say thanks through PayPal. :)
And thanks to all of those who tried to help me get through this -
although in the end I had to stumble through it on my own. :) Hope my
experience helps at least a few of you...
Sincerely,
Dan
--------------------------------------------
Daniel Gross, Director
Southeastern Wisconsin Instructional Network Group (SWING)
380 McCanna Parkway
Burlington, WI 53105
www.swing.k12.wi.us
gro...@gtc.edu or (262) 767-5312
--------------------------------------------
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