How to share a short clip from a DVD with others.

April 15, 2008 1:56 PM

How can I get a short clip from a DVD and save it to use in the classroom? Say I was teaching a lesson and a film had a short clip that was perfect at demonstrating something or at getting a point across and I wanted to save it and let other teachers use it in their lessons what would I have to do? Obviously I would look to getting the right clearance in terms of copyright - but how would I do this? Is there a really quick and easy way? Thanking you.
posted by mooreeasyvibe to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

Use VLC to play the DVD, while simultaneously recording the screen with a utility like Snapz Pro.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:00 PM on April 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Oh, is there anything for Windows?

It appears Snapz Pro is for Mac.

Sorry, I should've made that clear in the post.
posted by mooreeasyvibe at 2:03 PM on April 15, 2008

I use ImToo DVD Ripper for that sort of thing. It works well--once you it out. It's not completely intuitive, and whoever makes it doesn't have English as a native language, but now I can get it to so exactly what I want. To save a clip, you'll need to know the start time and how many minutes and seconds you want to record after that. I usually save it as an mpeg file and use the clip through my computer, although if you have DVD burning software, I suppose you could make DVD's, too.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:22 PM on April 15, 2008

Response by poster: Is there an unregistered version that works ok, or do I need to buy it?
posted by mooreeasyvibe at 2:27 PM on April 15, 2008

The term to search for is "vidcap", short for video capture.
posted by JJ86 at 2:33 PM on April 15, 2008

I don't think you really need any clearances. A "short clip" sounds like fair use to me.
posted by ryanissuper at 2:47 PM on April 15, 2008

I don't think you really need any clearances. A "short clip" sounds like fair use to me.

To be more precise: the teacher is protected, but not the students--and that protection has an expiration date. See this article from last November for an overview.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:57 PM on April 15, 2008

Best answer: There's not a free and very easy way, but you can use DVD Shrink (free) to do it. Use re-author mode, add the title you want, right-click the title and set in/out points. Run the backup, then in the resulting files, rename the main .vob file (that's your clip) to .mpg and play with VLC or Media Player Classic.

There's also a tutorial here that has some useful information.
posted by underwater at 10:55 PM on April 15, 2008

Response by poster: I tried IMToo DVD Ripper - it worked well. Can't justify the expense though when DVD Shrink worked perfectly.

The instructions given by underwater were spot on. Simple and to the point.

Thank you very much for your help.
posted by mooreeasyvibe at 6:43 AM on April 16, 2008