Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with software and dvd

DVD Fake-Out!

newfers — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:13:34 -0800

How can I make a phony DVD, that starts off promisingly, but eventually turns into something totally unexpected...with the intention of pranking a DVD thief? A friend of mine at work made a copy of a concert DVD for a friend... please attempt to disregard issues of legality and whatnot... Please?
Anyway, he left the DVD out for the friend, but it was eventually taken by an unknown person. And this is not the first time it has happened, sooooo.... we have a DVD nabber in our midst!

I had the idea of making a fake DVD, with the title of a tasty new release written on it, but at some point within the film, I'd insert either fake footage, something disturbing, or maybe even a personalized message to the DVD nabber...

I alternate between evil thoughts and simpler ideas, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to pull this off, in order to legitimitely waste the viewer's time... I have visions of the guy (gotta be a guy, right?) bringing home the DVD to watch with his girlfriend, and then, 30 minutes into it....SOMETHING FOUL HAPPENS!

Any suggestions or ideas?

CD manufacturer identification on the Mac?

ignignokt — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:18:38 -0800

Is there a Mac equivalent to CDR Media Code Identifier. This could be run in Parallels, but I'm not sure it'll be able to get what it needs out of the DVD drive. And of course, it'd be nice to not have to run Parallels.

High fidelity DVD ripping

sloe — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:28:33 -0800

High fidelity DVD ripping: collecting short videos from separate DVDs without losing any quality Hello

I have a bunch of short movies on separate DVDs that need to be strung together without losing any quality. This is for a screening so, if it is possible, preserving the image fidelity is important. Also note that these are independent artists so there are no copyright/encryption concerns here. I was thinking of a couple of different ways of tackling this and I was wondering if anyone with experience could let me know which is most likely to succeed and suggest software to accomplish this. Different solutions:

I) Rip the DVDs uncompressed to laptop hard-drive and play from there

My concern here is that the uncompressed DVD video will be gigantic and I don't know if the laptop graphics card can handle the data rate (I don't have the specs handy - it's not mine that will be used - it's about 1 year old and mid-range quality). Will the laptop play them back smoothly? What software would you recommend for lossless rips?

II) Rip the DVDs to a hard-drive, burn a new DVD containing all of them

This will work - but will there be quality loss in the uncompression/recompression? Any tricks for eliminating/reducing the quality loss?

III) Copy the video data directly

I don't know if this can be done, but it'd be great to just grab the raw DVD data, copy to the hard-drive, and burn it to a disk containing all of them - either to play consecutively or with a menu (the entire image as an iso won't be useful as it's not just a copy of a single disk I need to make). If this can be done, what software does it?

Thanks for any help in advance.

What are the best programs that can convert almost ALL kinds of video files and vice-versa?

omaralarifi — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:59:44 -0800

What are the best programs (paid/shareware/freeware/open source) that can convert almost ALL kinds of video files and vice-versa? All sort of video files such as : MJPEG · Motion JPEG 2000 · MPEG-1 · MPEG-2 · MPEG-4 ASP · MPEG-4/AVC · H.120 · H.261 · H.262 · H.263 · H.264 · AMV · AVS · Bink · Dirac · Indeo · Pixlet · RealVideo · RTVideo · SheerVideo · Smacker · Snow · Theora · VC-1 · VP6 · VP7 · VP8 · WMV · 3GP · ASF · AVI · Bink · DMF · DPX · EVO · FLV · Matroska · MPEG-PS · MPEG-TS · MP4 · MXF · NUT · Ogg · Ogg Media · QuickTime · RealMedia · Smacker · RIFF · VOB · AIFF · AU · WAV · FLA · Flash · and others

Note: It does not concern me if it a paid software or free.

Also are there programs that can rip VCD, SVCD, so the I can burn the files into DVD?

Thanks

Choosing a video editor

elgilito — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:23:12 -0800

We have 10 hours of Mini-DV tapes (interviews made during my wife's PhD research) and we're looking for a video editing software to edit them into a 1-2 hour DVD. We'll have to add subtitles and to clean noisy audio and video. What would be the best video software to do that? More detailed specs follow. - User-friendly: we're newbies at video editing
- Under €200
- Windows Vista
- The target audience consists in the few fellow researchers interested in the topic. No need for sophisticated video effects.
- Subtitles: the interviews will all be subtitled so the subtitling feature should be easy to set up. The subtitles will have to mix two character sets (French and Vietnamese).
- Audio and video correction: filming conditions were poor (handheld camcorder, indoors, low light, background noise). Not expecting magic there, but some minimal cleaning ability would be nice.
Software I've considered so far: Adobe Premiere Elements 7, Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate, Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Pro Pack, Cyberlink PowerDirector 7. However, the reviews I've seen rarely talk about the subtitle aspect (except for PowerDirector) and before test driving a bunch a crippled trial versions I'd like to hear suggestions from more experienced people.

Data + video in one disc

echo target — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:49:26 -0800

Trying to make a multi-mode DVD: video plus data. What tool do I need? I want to make a DVD that will play in an ordinary DVD player, but also contains some data files (independent of the video content) that can be seen when you put the disc in a computer.

I don't need to have autoruns, link to the data content from the disc menus, or anything fancy like that. I just want two types of data accessible by different machines.

The full story: I have video of an educational presentation. During the talk the speaker refers to the handouts. I'd like to have copies of the handouts on the disc so people can view them there or print off new copies if they don't have the hardcopies they got the first time.

Free/open source is best, but I might be willing to spend some money if necessary. Are there any good software tools for this?

DVD Slideshow recommendations?

osloheart — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:51:53 -0800

Can anyone recommend a good DVD Slideshow software download? I have about ONE MEEEELION photos that I need to burn onto DVDs. I want to make some slideshows with background music, and I have tried a few that basically sucked. The problem always seems to be: when I go to add music onto the movie, it just plain doesnt work. I think its something to do with iTunes music, it will not use it, but thats the only place I have music, on iTunes.... anyway, I need some help..

Thanks!!

Help me help my videos!

damiano99 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:03:05 -0800

VideoFilter: I have a ton of .mpg video files out of my camcorder. I would like to join them together as one file. It doesn't work using the copy command, I'm assuming because of embedded file data that messes up the indexes within the video footage. Is there a program that will take them and join them together quickly? I don't want to edit them, just join them. So far the only options I've found is to import them all to Avid or Vegas and let it re-render it as a whole which takes forever. The second option was some cheesy software I found that did it but it also took 30 minutes for 10 minutes of footage to join, which seems ridiculous. Does anyone in out there have a blackbelt in video-fu and can help me?

How to make non-anamorphic DVDs 16x9 enhanced?

codger — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:39:52 -0800

An easy way to turn widescreen DVDs anamorphic? I have a widescreen portable DVD player that doesn't have a good zoom function. I'd like to be able to play my so-called widescreen DVDs on it but without the black bars on all four sides, since it just centers the 4:3 image.

I realize this may cause some loss of quality, but since the alternative is seeing the picture on only 40% of the available screen, that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Is there an easy (and preferably free) way to fix the video so it is 16:9 enhanced - and preserve (reposition) the subtitles? I'm using Ubuntu (Feisty) and can also drop into WinXP if need be.

I've ripped and 1:1 copied discs before, but I've never edited a video file. The DVD player is region 1, not unlockable, and all of my DVDs are NTSC.

Ideally I'd rip the DVD, crop the video inside the VOB, set the 16x9 flag, and re-burn. It's not that easy, is it?

But it's just a little scratch

zachxman — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:11:47 -0800

On my Linux-based laptop and desktop, I've been having trouble reading DVDs that have even the slightest scratches. It seemed that Windows was a bit more tolerant of imperfections--is there any way to modify my [Ubuntu] settings so that it doesn't hang at the first missed bit? Now that half the country has Netflix and their DVDs are spending a lot of time in transit, every disk seems to come with at least one small abrasion. In an effort to smooth the playback (via Totem, VLC, MPlayer, whatever), I have taken to copying and/or transcoding the disk to my harddrive first (dvdrip, handbrake, vobcopy, and DVD Decrypter through wine), but each program hangs at the first unreadable sector. Is there any DVD equivalent to something like Exact Audio Copier to conduct error checking/correction to reclaim these bits? Alternately, are there any settings that I can modify to make my system tolerate a small gap in the data stream?

Suggestions for software to publish DVD recordings to web

orlin — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:44:25 -0800

I'm currently making recordings to a DVD and am interested in inexpensive software to edit and compress the recording with the intent to publish it to the web. An easy system to learn and that is relatively fast would be best. Thanks in advance for your suggestions...Orlin

Software to grab DVD scenes

RobotHero — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:24:02 -0800

Is there software that will let me convert a scene from a DVD? I want to be able to convert short clips from DVDs to a standard movie format, like an AVI or MPEG.

Most of the DVD ripping software out there is geared towards ripping entire DVDs. If I want to grab just a couple short (30 seconds) scenes from a couple different DVDs, it would be a hassle to rip the whole thing just to cut it down again.

What program should I use? (I have both Mac and Windows, but Mac would be better.)

My dad wants to turn his home movies into DVDs. Might win an Oscar, you can never tell.

IvyMike — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 22:49:56 -0800

What's the best Windows software package to edit video and create DVDs? My Dad's got a bunch of tapes from his JVC GR-D72U digital video camera. He has proven to me that can transfer the data into the computer, but the bundled software he has has never been very easy to use nor has it been reliable at being able to create DVDs.

What's the favored Windows solution at the moment? He doesn't need to do anything particularly fancy, but being able to cut scenes together, add music, put little "Happy Birthday" text on the screen, and create DVD menus from templates are probably all things he would want to do.

Also, keep in mind that the fewer times my dad calls me from two time zones away with crazy questions, the better. (I would normally provide support via VNC, but I suspect that won't work well during video editing.)

And yes, I know that one answer is "Get a Mac and iMovie", but that's out of the question for now. Maybe next time.

Back me up, Scotty!

sprocket87 — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:03:17 -0800

What are some good programs for backing up photo's to CD / DVD? Specific features requested. I currently have over 50GB of digital images that I need to start backing up to DVD. I'm looking for a good piece of software to assist me with this. I've only found 3 or 4 programs on Google that were even worth looking at, but none of them meets all of my requirements. Here are some of my stipulations:

MUST have:

Support for NEF (Nikon's RAW format), JPEG and TIFF
NOT use any proprietary database. I want the pictures in their unaltered format. I don't want to have to install the program wherever and do some wacky restore whenever I want to retrieve an archived photo

Strongly desired:

Generate printable index/CD templates/labels/etc to help identify archive disc content
Allow splitting folders across discs if necessary, and other intelligent folder/file handling abilities

Would be nice:

Generates a web gallery automatically for quickly reviewing pictures
Intelligent indication of files that have already been backed up, like PhotoLightning has (pictures/folders that have already been backed up have a mark indicating that so you don't have to guess)

I don't need an all in one DAM tool or catalogue program as I already have a satisfactory workflow. I would be willing to install a larger DAM suite if only to use it for backup purposes, assuming a) the backup tools met all of the above criteria and b) it would not hinder my current workflow.

Any suggestions? Thanks so much!

The Virtuallessness of Virtually No Virtual Set Software I can virtually afford

thewhynotgirl — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:23:02 -0800

I'm looking for a lower cost alternative to Serious Magic's Ultra 2, which looks perfect but is completely out of my budget at the moment. Can you help? The solution must not involve any heavy lugging of stuff ... one portable green screen and one computer laptop are all I want to carry, please! Thanks in advance.

Looking for a DVD capture programme..

ascullion — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 12:13:36 -0800

Does anyone know a decent real-time MPEG-2 capture program for the PC? One that produces high-quality output (as good as a standard DVD recorder), produces DVD compliant MPEG2 files, and is preferably free (or cheap). I've tried a few - ASUS Digital VCR and InterVideo WinDVR 3 - but they haven't really been up to scratch. Thanks in advance.

Budget DVD authoring in a nutshell.

mystyk — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 07:41:42 -0800

Looking for better DVD authoring software. After a lengthy hiatus, I am resuming work on creating DVD's for home use. Most of the time, this means home videos to be distributed with friends and family, but sometimes it means archiving shows that are not yet (or ever) available on DVD (typically captured through a DVR).

In both endeavors, I seek to create engaging, well-styled menues and extras, and to be able to control the structure and flow as much as possible.

So far I have been using Nero Vision Express 3, with reasonable success. I am able to create basic menus for titles and chapters, position elements, and add labels. That's about it. I have little leeway to do anything more.

I want to create menu screens that display text, a "back" button, and nothing else. I want "play" and "scene selections" buttons together, rather than one or the other. I want a "play all" feature for multiple titles, but to be able to see each one individually so that it returns the menu after each. I want to be able to have no label text next to selections. I want to set the label as the link so I can get rid of the image as the selection button. I want to get more control over the siz of selection images and label text.

Oh, and I'm fairly poor. Free software is most preferred, but low-cost may be an option.

Looking for XP software designed to rip DVDs of episodic TV?

lukeomalley — Thu, 04 May 2006 09:48:39 -0800

I own all of the southpark dvds and I want to rip each episode to an individual file for my media center. I know I can do this manually but it is tedious. Is there any Rip software that can do a batch conversion?

Can I copy Templates for DVD Studio Pro 4?

Toolshed — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 20:12:42 -0800

I have installed DVD Studio Pro 4 on my Powerbook, as part of the Final Cut Studio Pro 5 suite. However, the templates or styles didn't install and I don't have a "Content" icon on the install disk. Is it possible to get the folders of templates and styles from someone? I don't want a copy of your disk or to do anything illegal, but if someone had the program installed and could copy only those folders, I don't think it would constitute copyright infringement ... or would it?

Subtitles from DVD/VCD/Video Cassette Tapes into a computer text file

studentguru — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:59:17 -0800

Subtitles from DVD/VCD/Video Cassette Tapes into a computer text file ----- the fastest way ? Without typing or paying someone to transcribe? Any software or hardware that can do the job? I know of one VCR player made in the early 1990s that can do this but it has been discontinued and the manufacturer no longer around. The discontinued product is :
"Instant Replay's Caption Writer VCR is an enhancement of its earlier Caption Master, which has a built-in decoder for displaying closed-captions. These captions, invisible without a decoder, accompany the majority of prime-time programming and are intended to let the hearing-impaired enjoy TV. But other viewers find captioning useful too, such as in learning the language.
Expanding on the idea that television is a stream of information as well as entertainment, Instant Replay's Caption Writer allows the user to have a written copy of a script as soon as a show is over. The only requirement is that you have a computer printer, a connecting cable and a program that happens to be closed-captioned."

Any such thing as a free DVD/CD writing software?

sublivious — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:56:38 -0800

Any such thing as a free DVD/CD writing software for Windows? What I'd really like is an application that works a lot like Nero in its CD/DVD burning functions but free. It should be easy to use, have the ability to burn DVD movies, data DVDs, data CDs, Audio CDs, and Dual Layer support would be a plus. Also it should support newish drives with support for the latest drives always getting attention.

I believe DVD Decrypter could do this, but it's been acquired by Macrovision Europe and distribution has been ended. So far I've found ImgBurn (which apparently is by the folks that brought us DVD Decrypter), DeepBurner (the free version doesn't do DVD video), and CDBurnerXP Pro (may not do DVD video nor support the drive in question). None of them meet my requirements.

Conversion experiences?

Artifice_Eternity — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:41:55 -0800

Suggestions on reliable, inexpensive (<$50) software for converting AVI to MPEG-2?

Will our Protools backup scheme work?

jon_kill — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:33:40 -0800

A few questions about our Pro-Tools setup. We're concerned about performance and backing up data. What we had considered doing was:

a) purchase a Lacie drive (160 GB Firewire) ( to hang off our laptop Mac OS X 10.4) and persist our Digi 002 Protools (LE version 7) sessions.

b) purchase an external DVD writer and burn the sessions from every day onto DVD for the back catalog.

Can anybody foresee any problems with our setup? Might there be a more cost effective yet equally secure way to do it?

A simple DVD authoring program?

ascullion — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 06:42:28 -0800

Does anyone know of a program that will take a DVD-compatible MPEG2 file, and generate a very simple DVD VIDEO_TS folder - ie, no menu, just the file in a format that a DVD player can recognize I use DVD authoring programs, but they generally have much more functionality than I need, so i was wondering if anyone knew of anything simple. A command line program would be quite good. I use Windows XP.

I just want to watch a movie, damn it!

Heminator — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 08:21:30 -0800

Traveling on business with a company laptop -- has a DVD drive, but no DVD software. I want to watch a DVD to make the long train ride home bearable, but I don't have administrator privileges to install any software. Computer has Windows Media Player and Real Player installed, but neither will play the DVD as there are no DVD decoders/software installed. The computer has no problem recognizing the DVD and viewing the files.

There's a Radio Shack a couple of blocks from the conference I'm at. Could I buy a cheap jump drive, install a player on that and use it to watch my DVDs? Or will the computer not allow that as well?

Any other workarounds or do I have to call up the IT guys and grovel for them do me a favor and install the software?