DVD Ripping and burning: I'm ready to rip my hair out!

January 18, 2006 12:01 AM

Burning DVDs: I want to get clips from (commercial and locked) DVDs and into a new DVD for class, with a menu system. I've seen this explanation, but I have a Mac (OS X, I could be convinced to upgrade to 10.4 if necessary). What's the easiest and/or best way to do this?

I have a PowerBook G4, external FireWire hard-drive, a stack of DVDs and I've tried a whole bunch of different programs, found here. I want the easiest solution available. If it's free or cheapish (under $100), that's even better. I'd rather not rip the entire DVD to my hard-drive every time I do this - each week of class could include up to 8 clips from different films. The menu page doesn't have to look fancy - it just has to be able to separate each clip (like a chapter).

PLEASE treat me like a total moron here: even though I'm pretty well versed in some computer stuff, this is totally foreign to me right now and I have no idea what VOB, AVI, MPEG2 or any of the other derivations should be doing for me. Will Cinematize do this? MacTheRipper, then something else? iDVD? What is each step? Many thanks in advance: I've already spent hours and hours with someone else trying to figure this out, and I'm at my wit's end.

posted by barnone to technology (11 comments total)

Other options, from poking around: DVDxDV? AutoGK?
posted by barnone at 12:03 AM on January 18, 2006

Mac The Ripper will rip the dvd to your hard drive and it's free. It allows you to rip segments of the dvd, but not scenes or clips. So, you can use it to rip the dvd but exclude the extras, for instance. You have to use something else to actually burn it to DVD. I don't have a suggestion, however, as I use Popcorn (about $60) but it only burns the entire contents of the folder that MTR ripped.
posted by Manhasset at 12:48 AM on January 18, 2006

Not having done this before...I would try using HandBrake to rip the DVD into MPEG4 format. Perhaps you can even use it to select specific chapters of the DVD to rip. Then I'm assuming from this tutorial you can import these directly into iDVD, where you can create your menus, and burn your disc.
posted by jaimev at 3:36 AM on January 18, 2006

Yup, Handbrake will let you choose chapters of the DVD to rip. You might need to bring them into iMovie before iDVD if you want to edit things beyond chapter-by-chapter. Leave yourself plenty of time; iMovie is slow.

Don't worry about all those other file formats; in this case, where you don't need to compress video and share it on teh internets, they're not that important.
posted by bcwinters at 4:48 AM on January 18, 2006

Barnone,

Download MPEG Streamclip.

It has the ability to browse a DVD and choose IN/OUT points.

File Menu Convert to Quicktime:
Compressor: Apple DV/DVCPro - NTSC
720x480
Uncompressed stereo 48Khz Audio

Leave everything else alone.

Capture the clips you like.

Then, bring them into imovie. Arrange as you like (or not!) iMovie can send them over to iDVD

or..

Go to iDVD, and drag and drop each clip individually.

-------------------
DVD's are MPEG-2s that have been specially authored to a specification. They're broken into Video OBjects (or VOBs) at the one gigabyte mark.

What we're trying to do...is extract the video sections you want...into a format you can edit easily (DV.) If you get the format right - there is no re-compressed when it gets edited (vs. using a format like DiVX, MPEG-4 etc.) These will be changed when they hit iMovie to DV.

Then we can arrage the clips, dissolves/titles in iMovie
Finally, we can output with iDVD.

Another reason to avoid MPEG4 or DiVX as an 'editing' format - is that they're taking a compressed format (MPEG-2) and compressing it further.

The only area that I'm unsure on (because I don't have a DVD on me, as I'm on the road) is if you need to remove the DVD's copy protection or if MPEG streamclip won't care. CSS (content scramblling system) is the major annoyance with DVDS.
posted by filmgeek at 5:09 AM on January 18, 2006

filmgeek: I downloaded it. I can't see how to browse the DVD itself and capture the points. That looks like a good way to do it though, I'm sorry I'm being thick. It's been a long night.
posted by barnone at 5:49 AM on January 18, 2006

Continued from above: [File/Menu/Open...] What do I open? One of the VOB files listed on the DVD? That doesn't seem to open the video itself in MPEG Streamclip.
posted by barnone at 6:04 AM on January 18, 2006

[I'm sorry, I'll shut up after this, but maybe I need the Quicktime MPEG-2 playback?]
posted by barnone at 6:07 AM on January 18, 2006

Yes, you do.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:48 AM on January 18, 2006

Dammit you're right you do. I just check the help. I forget my powerbook is tweaked out as such. Um...lets see what your email has to see if it helps.
posted by filmgeek at 7:37 AM on January 18, 2006

What I do is to rip the dvd with MacTheRipper. I try to find the chapters I need first, and only rip those instead of the whole disk. Then I use DroptoDV, which is a simplified ffmpeg. You just drop the vob from MTR into droptoDV and a while later a dv file pops out, just like the file from a digital video camera. You can now use those files in iMovie (drag and drop into iMovie), and then take those to iDVD.

You don't need to know what you're doing at all with this way. Just get the chapter out with MTR, convert it to .dv with DroptoDV, and edit it in iMovie, and burn it with iDVD. By converting the DVD to .dv, it's just like editing a movie from your video camera. It might be too late, but I don't think it gets easier than this.
posted by Jomoma at 6:32 PM on January 18, 2006