Music Video Help

[JadziaKathryn]

I humbly request advice from those who know what they're doing. I thought I'd try making a video to see if I can. I have Windows Movie Maker on my computer, so I thought, how hard can it be? (It's a Voyager video because the only Trek I have on DVD is VOY season 7, but anyway...)

As it turns out, I can't manage to save the episode onto my computer from the DVD. When I pulled up the disc drive to save them, the DVD has a folder full of .BUP, .ISO, and .VOP files. Does anyone know what this is and, more to the point, how I can save episodes to my computer and get on with this little endeavor?

Could it make a difference that it's the slightly cheaper foreign-market set? (I don't recall the details there... it was a gift.)

Thanks for any insights!

[TPoptarts]

You have to rip the DVDs first into a format compatible with WMM like avi, wmv, mpg and for that you need a DVD ripper. There's plenty out there (but they COST and I know you don't like the "free" downloads) I use Magic DVD Ripper it's pretty good and relatively fast. I guess you could download like free trial versions of DVD rippers, if you find one that's fully functional but only for a limited time/number of uses that's good, though there's those that put like a permanent caption on the file they rip and only rip like the first 5 minutes or whatever stupid dren like that. Anyway you need a DVD ripper first.

And like then after you have your WMM compatible video file you can open it in WMM and divide it into clips and all that.

(Um can't really give any insight about actual music video making because I only ever made one and even then I had no idea what the frell I was doing. )

[JadziaKathryn]

Thanks! I found a DVD ripper that's supposed to be free. Now I think I'm ripping "Flesh and Blood" instead of "Lineage" which I wanted, so obviously I have some kinks to work out, but progress is being made.

[HopefulRomantic]

When I went looking for a DVD ripper, I found one, plus a set of incredibly detailed, easy to follow instructions for same, at VideoHelp.com. You might nose around that site and see if you find a "how-to" for your DVD ripper there. Tons of info there.

[Jamieson]

Well this is about four years too late, but if anyone is still looking for a good program to grab scenes and such off of DVDs (for vidding or any other purpose), one of the best programs I've found is DVDShrink (www.dvdshrink.org). It's a free program, and it decrypts almost any DVD (I have come across a few it can't crack, but they are very few and far between).

You can pull pretty much anything off with this program, including extras and audio (if the DVD is authored with multiple audio tracks instead of everything compiled onto one, you can actually separate out the dialogue from the background noise if you want to stick some audio overlays into your video without the background noise messing with the vid song - I know the ENT DVDs, at least Seasons 3 and 4, have this lovely setup). You can also pick and choose which scenes/clips from the movie/episode you want, so you don't have to grab the whole thing (makes it easier to work with in vidding programs because it's easier for the program to manage and makes it easier to locate the specifc clip you want to add to the vid). You can also grab the video in very very high quality, so there is minimal quality loss when you go to make the vid.

[Jamieson]

I should add that the output format for DVDShrink is .vob, and there are conversion programs out there that will change them into whatever you'd like (a good one I use is Format Factory - http://www.pcfreetime.com/download.html - it converts all kinds of media into different formats, and you have many options for quality levels, etc). However, if you are using a program that works with .mp4, it is even easier, as .vob files are essentially .mp4 files - all you need to do is to rename the file and change the ".vob" to ".mp4" and you'll have no problem using it. Most editing programs can work with .mp4 without needing conversion.