Converting DVD into usable iMovie Clips?

[nyycavo24]

I've seen variations of this question in different forums, but I didn't know if any of those answers applied to mine, so....

I am planning on making a rather involved movie in iMovie of some old football games from when my friends and I were in high school.

These games were originally shot with a normal VHS camera and then converted to DVD using one of those combo players.

What is the best way to take those games and convert them into a format where I can chop them up (down to individual plays) so I can make this video in iMovie?

They are obviously not copyright protected or encrypted or anything like that. I just need to import these things and start to slice and dice.

Thanks for the help everyone!

[Stampyhead]

There's a great little program called DVDxDV (http://www.dvdxdv.com) that takes footage from your non-copy-protected DVD and converts it to a Quicktime movie. It works really well. You can get the pro version for $80 or the regular version for $25.

[comebackdwn]

you could use handbrake.
it's very easy and converts the files to mp4, which are totally qualified for imovie. that is what i use.

[stevep]

I've been using MPEGStreamclip (free :) ) but I had to download Apples MPEG-2 Playback Component (not free, £15 :( ). Worked a treat - divided the original video_ts file into seperate clips by setting in and out points, exported them as mp4 files and dragged them straight into iMovie.