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Editing (Cutting) Digital Video

jparker402

jparker402

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2016
560
54
Bellevue, NE
Have a couple of really novice questions about videos. Have been having slides and a few 8mm films digitized. On one of the films I found a very short segment that I would like to send to my brother. I have a 2015ish MacBook Air with iMovie on it and VLC. He has an older MacBook Pro and I have no idea what software.

First question. Both iMovie and VLC tutorials on YouTube talk about "cutting". I am hoping that means that if I "cut" a segment from my digital video, that the original video remains intact; i.e. the "cut" segment becomes an additional copy of just that piece. Is this correct? I don't want to cut something out and have it disappear from my original video.

Second question. Is there any advantage to doing this with iMovie? VLC? I really don't plan on doing this often, at least at the moment, and would like the process to be as simple as possible. I do not handle complexity well!

Thanks!
 
yes, imovie leaves the original footage alone. when you „cut“, it‘s just in program - just export to a different filename :).

imovie is probably the easiest way to do this. you could also use quicktime, to „trim“ away the excess footage. but be aware that quicktime does indeed throw away everything you cut, so first make a copy of the file
 
iMovie would probably be easiest. You would import the video, which doesn't change anything just makes a copy. Create a new project (with a different name) and drag the imported video to it. Modify as you like, which also doesn't change the original, and then share the project for apple devices. iMovie will create a new video file with the cuts and effects applied and not change the original. If you share it for apple devices, then it should play on any Mac.
 
Thanks, but not working so far. Finally figured out how to tell iMovie how to open my movies to load them, and it tells me that it cannot load them because they are in a DVD format. DVD is what my neighbor transferred my film to. (And now I can't find the original film.) Any idea on downloading movies that are in a DVD format?

Oh, it may be important for me to mention that I used VlC to copy the DVD to a USB stick on a Windows 7 machine before downloading to the Mac.
 
It sounds like you'll have to convert the format of the movies into something iMovie can import and work with.

Can "Handbrake" do this?
 
Handbrake can certainly rip the DVD, but not sure if it can directly export it in an editable format although iMovie may be able to convert that (I have only used Handbrake to convert DVD's for playback). In the past, I used MPEG Streamclip for what you want though, it has an option to convert a DVD directly to DV. Haven't used in quite awhile though. http://www.squared5.com
 
Handbrake will easily convert the DVD into a format such as mp4, which will be editable by iMovie.
- Get Handbrake, which also requires VLC to create an mp4 from your DVD. Handbrake is made to deliver good results with default settings. VLC extracts the video from the DVD, and Handbrake transcodes it from MPEG-2 to mp4 format, usable by iMovie and Quicktime. While Handbrake requires VLC, it is completely transparent in operation.
- If you just want to extract a small clip (that is, cut off the parts before and after) you can use iMovie. A little bit of a learning curve here, but lots of online tutorials, including from Apple.
- Alternately, you can use Quicktime (either 7 or X) to cut or Trim the unwanted parts of the movie, and Save As a new title. This is easy, but you may need to Google up a quick "how to."

I can appreciate that working with video can be a steep learning curve, so keep asking questions!
 
Just to make sure I am not confusing anybody, let me repeat what happened to my 8mm movies. My neighbor "digitized" them with some Windows program he has which transfers them unto DVDs. I told him I wanted them on a USB stick, but he put them on a DVD anyway. Only DVD "player" I have is an HP Windows 7 machine. So I put the DVD into the Windows 7 machine and then copied the DVD to a USB stick to use on the Mac. Plus on the advice of Apple I downloaded VLC to play it. And it plays. So far so good. Until I try to import it into iMovie, as I earlier mentioned. Right now I selected my movie file, selected info, and it reads "VOB File (DVD Video)".

I still do have the DVD my neighbor made, but I have no DVD player on my Mac. So what I will want to be working from is either the Mac file itself or the USB stick.

I mention all of this because I see people saying words to the effect now take your DVD.... I can't take my DVD because I have nothing to play it on except the HP.

Hope that helps.
 
You can buy a USB DVD player for like $20-$40, and plug it into your Mac. Most of us lacking a DVD slot in our Macs have one laying around just for this case.

You need to "RIP" the DVD to a editable format before iMovie can do anything with it. Does Handbrake open the file you have on the USB stick? Can he (or you) play the DVD from the USB stick?

If not, and you want to use a USB stick, on your windose machine make a CD/DVD master type disk image of the DVD instead of copy. On a Mac you would use Disk Utility, dunno what you use on a Windose machine. That will make a playable image that handbrake will rip for you. In fact, when one authors a DVD, the program first makes a disk image and then burns the image to disks. I doubt your neighbor still has the images hanging around.


DVDs can deteriorate over a few years and become unplayable. You may want to think about making backup images of the DVDs anyway. With the images on a hard drive, you can use your routine backup strategy to make sure you don't loose them.

So it may be prudent to buy a USB DVD player and use disk utility to make CD/DVD master images of all your DVDs. A CD/DVD master has a different format than the typical hard drive you store files on.
 
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Have you tried Handbrake? Free. Drag the vob (or ts_video) file from the dvd.
 
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