Edit DVD in iMovie or need additional software?

[kmts325]

I am a graphic designer and know little about video. A friend asked me to cut out a portion on a burned DVD. In doing some online research, I saw a DVD ripper program for $50. Is there any other way to do this without buying additional software or can this be done using programs my Mac OS X comes with? iMovie?

Thanks!!!

 

[spinnerlys]

MacTheRipper for ripping/copying the DVDs contents to your HDD and MPEG Streamclip for converting the MPEG2 .vobs into DV (PAL/NTSC) .movs for better/best editing.

 

[RemarkabLee]

Mac The Ripper not necessary unless you are ripping from a protected Disc. MPEG Stream Clip can open DVDs directly if they are not copy protected.

 

[spinnerlys]

Mac The Ripper not necessary unless you are ripping from a protected Disc. MPEG Stream Clip can open DVDs directly if they are not copy protected.

Yes, MPEG Streamclip can open .vobs directly from unprotected DVDs. But as the DVD drive is not that fast in transfer rates (compared to an HDD), copying the DVD contents to your HDD will speed things up in the encoding process.

Also copying even unprotected video DVDs might result in error codes from Finder.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/697687/ - even though MTR warned about bad sectors, which Finder might have had its problem with while copying.

 

[RemarkabLee]

Yes, MPEG Streamclip can open .vobs directly from unprotected DVDs. But as the DVD drive is not that fast in transfer rates (compared to an HDD), copying the DVD contents to your HDD will speed things up in the encoding process.

Also copying even unprotected video DVDs might result in error codes from Finder.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/697687/ - even though MTR warned about bad sectors, which Finder might have had its problem with while copying.

My method would would be:

1. Open the DVD in MPEG Stream Clip
2. Select the In and Out points of the section you want to remove
3. Export to MPEG

Done. No re-encoding necessary and only one write-to-hard disk operation required. The only speed limitation would be the read speed of the optical drive (i.e. it's riplock speed) as there will be no transcode operation. Ripping the disc first will take longer as you will be ripping the entire disc.

Any issues with copying via finder will be due to original mastering errors or physical disc issues - both of which MtR won't be able to help with.

 

[spinnerlys]

Okay, I understand the part about just selecting the part to "rip", as MTR ripping would take maybe longer if the selection one wants to use is less than an hour.

But wouldn't iMovie need something more suitable than MPEG-2 encoded video?
Or will iMovie automatically convert the MPEG-2 clip to something it can use natively?

It's serious curiosity of my part, as I don't use iMovie, and the editing applications I use (formerly iUse due to Apple programming ) are not happy with MPEG-2 data, like Avid and FCP.

 

[RemarkabLee]

Okay, I understand the part about just selecting the part to "rip", as MTR ripping would take maybe longer if the selection one wants to use is less than an hour.

But wouldn't iMovie need something more suitable than MPEG-2 encoded video?
Or will iMovie automatically convert the MPEG-2 clip to something it can use natively?

It's serious curiosity of my part, as I don't use iMovie, and the editing applications I use (formerly iUse due to Apple programming ) are not happy with MPEG-2 data, like Avid and FCP.

Sure, if the OP wants to use iMovie, but my method avoids the need to use iMovie.

If they want to use iMovie then the best solution would be to replace step 3 with 'Export to DV'. Then import and edit in iMovie. The project can be opened in iDVD to be written back to Disc. Unfortunately that will add 2 generations of compression, (MPEG2 > DV > MPEG2) which is never a good idea.

The original method is the fastest method and does not introduce any generation loss of quality.

 

[spinnerlys]

.....

The original method is the fastest method and does not introduce any generation loss of quality.

That's true of course, and I should have mentioned that in my posts. Hmm, getting lazy post by post.

And I also set my mind onto iMovie, as I read it from the OP's 1st post. Lazy again.

All good things are three I suppose.

 

[RemarkabLee]

No worries, glad to help out where I can