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— VLC audio-video player –
essential
— Making editable movie extracts from DVDs
— Extracting and saving stills
——— Play ANY media file. Very highly recommended ———
VLC VideoLan is a
totally useful, free, no-nonsense and excellent media player that
manages
any audiovisual format reliably and efficiently without your
having to ‘join up’, ‘sign in’, ‘log in’, ‘become a member’, without
having to
deselect ‘free’ offers, and without having
to go through ‘media libraries’ or ‘my favourites ’, or being expected to fill in ‘customer satisfaction' questionnaires. VLC VideoLan
just does the job, does it well, and for FREE.
VLC also deals satisfactorily with DVDs. To view a DVD,
click Media then select Open file.
Browse to the VIDEO_TS folder containing the DVD you want to play and
double click the file VIDEO_TS.IFO (DVD file nomenclature
explained shortly). Your DVD should then play correctly.
• Yes, double-click
the file VIDEO_TS.IFO (surrounded by red, above).
• Yes, all DVDs do have the same file names because they are assumed to be
stored on separate carriers.
• Yes, VIDEO_TS.IFO is the only one that properly
opens your
DVD.
N.B. If you've been careless enough
to check the option Hide
extensions for known file types in Windows, or if you’ve just left that option in that state ever since
you acquired your computer, you won't see any difference between
VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.IFO and
VIDEO_TS.VOB. That’s useless if you’re dealing with DVDs
because you won't know which VIDEO_TS file to
select! You must UNCHECK THE HIDE
EXTENSIONS option in Windows if you can’t see the .IFO,
.BUP and .VOB parts of the file listing! Here’s where you do that
essential unchecking operation:
— Vista,
XP: [My]Computer → Tools → Folder options →
View
— Windows 7: Control Panel → Folder
Options → View
— Windows 10: Control Panel → Appearance & Personalisation → File Explorer
Options → View → Uncheck Hide Extensions for known File Types
DVD
Decrypter ——— Back up DVD movies to your hard drive
DVD Decrypter is an old no-nonsense piece of free software that lets you transfer DVD files to your hard drive.
— Click on this line to access the DOWNLOAD site.
Screen shot: files on DVD The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
DVDs can easily get scratched or otherwise made useless by dirt, grease, dust, etc. DVD Decrypter lets you back up your DVDs to hard disk. Just make sure the (1) Source drive and (2) Destination folders are correct. Then (3) select all the files on the right and (4) press the DVD to hard drive icon bottom left. When the decryption and transfer are done you can, if you want, copy the DVD files on to a blank DVD. Be aware that duplicating copyrighted DVD content for others is against the law.
Using DVD Decrypter to copy DVD files to hard disk is also a useful first step if you need to edit audiovisual material for teaching or research purposes.
You may have trouble with DVD regions. It's worth learning about that issue (see heading RCE (Regional Coding Enhancement) Protection removal at this site), especially if you are involved in any type of media analysis or teaching. To remove region protection using DVD Decrypter:
1. Select -> Tools -> Settings -> General and set your region according to this table
2. Ensure that ‘Remove IFO/BUP RCE Protection’ options are all checked.
If you have other problems with ripping DVDs, go to www.mrbass.org/dvdrip/ for very useful tips and information.
Making editable movie extracts from DVDs
Essential facts about DVDs
Unlike USB flash drives or MiniDiscs, DVDs have an exposed and unprotected surface. They are easy to damage. Dirt and scratches make them unusable. DVD backups are a necessity because no-one wants to pay twice for something that becomes unusable from the slightest scratch.
Movies come out on media not only exposed to dust, grease and scratches but also formatted to different scanning norms (NTSC, PAL, SECAM, etc.) which the big corporations, in their insatiable thirst for money, have divided into mutually incompatible DVD ‘regions’ that make a mockery of globalisation (divide et impera). Add to that the problem of copy protection and producing DVD extracts for editing and analysis becomes a time-consuming hassle (solutions later).
DVD stands for 'Digital Versatile Disc'.It's simply a carrier that can contain data of any sort. A DVD is a type of moveable medium in the same way as a CD or a USB drive. The problem with ‘DVD’ is that it doesn't just signify a particular type of data carrier: it also denotes a particular mode of coding and storing information on a hard drive, or a USB stick or a DVD disc. Commercially bought feature films were for several years coded and stored as DVD files on DVD discs.
DVD files all have the same sort of name, whether the film on the disc is The Sound of Music or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The most important same-name DVD files to recognise are those with names like VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB, VTS_01_3.VOB etc. and the file VIDEO_TS.IFO.
The double-numbered VOB (Video OBject) files just mentioned are those containing the actual film. You’ll notice that most of them are around one gigabyte in size, the equivalent of about 26 minutes of viewing, and that the last one in the series is smaller. You can in other words roughly calculate where in which VOB file a particular extract in a film on DVD starts and ends. You need to know that the breaks between one VOB file to the next (e.g. from VTS_01_1.VOB to VTS_01_2.VOB) virtually never occur at natural breaks in the visual or audio narrative (solution later).
You also need to know that the DVD file ‘VIDEO_TS.IFO’ contains information keeping track of the various double-numbered VTS_*.VOB files. It's also the file to click when you want to see a DVD production on your computer.
Removing regional restriction and copy protection, copying to hard drive (ripping)
Before you can do anything at all with the contents of a commercially bought DVD, you almost always have to remove its regional restriction and copy protection. Without that step you're lumbered with a totally uneditable, unmanageable product. You also need to transfer the DVD files to your hard drive in order to edit them. Several pieces of software do the code breaking and transfer all in one go. I recommend DVD Decrypter for this purpose.
To do video editing you need —— quelle surprise!—— video editing software. If you don’t have any and want something cheap and cheerful, try one of these, or this. Then there's Virtual Dub (free and open source), Windows MovieMaker and so on before you get to more established high-end stuff like Avid, Vegas Pro, Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro. Personally I use and recommend Sony Vegas Pro v.8.0: I find it intuitive, reliable and fast. Its main drawback is that even an academic license costs $400 Canadian.
If your video editing software can’t handle VOB files you'll need to convert them into a format it can deal with. It may in any case be useful to convert from VOB to another digital video format (like MP4) especially if the film extract you want to deal with spans two VOB files.
Total DVD decrypting then video
editing
A Preliminaries
C. Inside your video editing software (here it's Vegas)
If your extract contains spoken language and has more than one soundtrack you will need to mute or delete the language soundtracks you don’t need. In that case go to a place in the VOB file where there’s speech and deselect, mute or delete soundtracks as appropriate (see next picture but one).
The best and least complicated way of saving stills (freeze-frames) from moving images is to use the function providied by your video editing software.
For example, in Vegas you do this (see image, below):