Best Way to Grab Movie Clips?

DorkusMasterus asks: "I work for my church in a volunteer sense, and I'm trying to produce a video that will incorporate video clips from films (short, less than 30 seconds per clip, more likely 5-10 seconds), and I am wondering what you fine folks use to grab clips from DVD and TV (in preferably an MPEG or AVI format when completed). Please keep in mind that I am not interested in something that would copy a full-length film, nor am I'm not advocating discussion on how to best pirate films. What utilities would you use to retrieve short clips from DVDs and other digital sources?"

Comments

DVD Shrink & TMPGenc

[dada21]

I run a church media ministry out of my home, and we use DVD Shrink. The software is freeware, and it is excellent. It lets you select what scenes/chapters/frames you want to copy, and creates a new DVD-compatible clip on your hard drive. What is nice about VOB files (the DVD files) is that they are MPEG-compliant, so you can just rename the VOB extension to MPG and off you go.

If you need to shrink the file to lower res than DVD, I recommend TMPGenc, which works very well. You can also import your VOB/MPG into Adobe Premiere Pro and export it to a new format, while editing clips together with fades, titles, etc.

What is your budget? Do you prefer F/OSS? Windows? Mac? Linux?

Re:DVD Shrink & TMPGenc

[Baricom]

Are you familiar with the fair use/DMCA implications? An administration organization that deals with Christian music says public performance is exempt from copyright restrictions, but does that also apply to DVDs?

Re:DVD Shrink & TMPGenc

[dada21]

Here's a tough one -- I'm an anarcho-capitalist Christian, so I actually don't pay attention to whatever laws you guys voted for. They're irrelevant for how I live my life. That being said, MANY congregations that I serve are VERY cautious about violating copyright. There's a huge debate that comes up every 6 months or so over at www.churchmedia.net (worst community ever, but its the only one, so that's where we go) about what Fair Use is and isn't.

I use it all, and if anything, my use of "unlicensed products" probably sells more of it -- people see clips, gain interest (or regain interest), and go out and buy the DVD or CD. Ridiculous laws, but some people want to follow them.

Re:DVD Shrink & TMPGenc

[Baricom]

I understand, and I'd completely agree that the media industry has definitely been taking things overboard in all sorts of ways, and that church performances help them far more than they lose in revenue. However, I don't know if I'd go as far as not paying attention to all laws - see Romans 13:1-7, for example.

Anyway, for the reference of everybody, I did my own research and CCLI claims you need a separate license for performance of movies. The license costs $50-$600 annually depending on which studios you license and your church's attendance, and it seems to imply that you must play clips off the original media - no dubbing allowed, even for production purposes.

I suppose one should let the Holy Spirit and one's fear of Roman/corporate punishment determine how to proceed. Best of luck regardless of what path you take.

Re:DVD Shrink & TMPGenc

[DoubleRing]

Hrm, I'm curious. I could say that I don't pay attention to the rules that a Mafia sets up. I'd hardly call that wise though. I'd pay a lot of attention and take action (like, um, move away?). The thing is, any organization that has the potential to have a significant impact on your life (let's say, arrest you) shouldn't be straight up ignored.

I find anarcho-capitalism intriguing. What you want is for capitalism to extend into the public utilities, law enforcement, etc. should be run on a capitalist model. I just think there are some things where more money shouldn't equal more power. Or, money shouldn't be involved at all, like libraries. I can see that it would be an excellent way of life (like communism if it ever worked at the way it was supposed to), but it's too dependent on human perfection. As much aversion you may have to government, I find democracy is the best place where our leaders can be placed in a "free market" and each person (well, citizen) can vote equally regardless of whether they're rich or poor. I believe humans are generally good, but shouldn't be trusted. Because of the state that the world is in and the existence of human flaws like racism, it's hard for me to believe more good would come out than bad. People will form corporations and people will form mafias. I can see how things could become very efficient, but with the existence of off-shoring, very little trickle-down will take place and the masses will tend to suffer. Monopolies and cartels form without the urging of government, and American history alone demonstrates how negative of an effect these have. And the capitalization of public utilities is not efficient. What will happen is that each company will create it's own highway/rail/etc. And some things, like air traffic control, have no real market. Who sets the monetary standard by the way?

Law enforcement is similar. I really don't ever see rent-a-cops in malls and neighborhood watches ever do anything more than call the "real" cops. And that's a GOOD thing. A law enforcement without laws is a little scary, especially if that is blended with capitalism meaning money is involved. A great place to look is Sicily. It's been occupied so many times over the years that the constant changing has created a place with virtually no government (well, not anymore really, but historically). During that long unstable time, a fairly stable society rose up. A sort of neighborhood rule. I find that unnecessarily divisive. Neighborhood rule, Mafia rule, gang rule, are all the same in principle, and that is what will happen. There are too many cases in history to ignore the dangerous possibility.

You talk about how you dislike the RIAA's practices. So do I. I would be REALLY scared if they could employ their own law enforcers. All of the jokes about the RIAA police would come to life!

I find it odd that you are also Christian. Will there be free market religion as well? Religion is one of the most hierarchical organizations on earth. It's a step beyond autocracy. Did you ever get to choose your leader? What makes it right for him to rule? Why does he have that power? Do you know that he's perfect, or just take his word for it?

I really respect your views. They fact that you are brave enough to come out and talk about them really shines in my eyes. You have one of the most impressive and logical thought processes I've seen on Slashdot (does that say anything much?). I don't know whether you'd appreciate this, but I'd think you would make an excellent senator or representative. I like to think of Democracy as structured anarchy. It's the best way I can think of letting individual's express themselves without degenerating into complete chaos. Well, we still have problems, but the great thing is, there actually is a way of fixing them. I agree that there are many things that should be commercialized--like space exploration. But stuff like this isn't a zero-sum game. There's room for concurrency.

I'v

Re:"But I only stole the hubcaps!"

[earnest murderer]

Fair use covers the use of short clips in specific circumstances.

Also, copyright infringement is not theft.

Re:"But I only stole the hubcaps!"

[EzInKy]

I don't know if you're the religious type (I assume so if you're volunteering for your church) but stealing short clips is still stealing. "Thou shall not steal" doesn't come with size qualifiers.


Funny thing is that no matter how large a portion he uses nothing is missing from the original work. Nothing missing, nothing stolen.


Producing a video for an audience to watch is even worse, you're basically using someone else's effort to create a product.


Nobody creates anything in a vacuum so every new work is based on someone else's effort.


And soliciting advice on how to hack into DVDs is a violation of the DMCA, agree with it or not.


Most religions require their followers to violate immoral laws.

MEncoder

[Dutch_Cap]

MEncoder (the media encoder that comes with mplayer) should be able to do this pretty easily.

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -ss <START> -endpos <END> dvd://<CHAPTER> -of mpeg -o <FILENAME>.mpg

..will copy part of the video to an mpeg file, where START and END are formatted as [[HOURS:]MINUTES:]SECONDS. Note that -endpos is relative to the starting position, it's not the position in the file.

Re:MEncoder

[simm1701]

There is a problem in doing this with MPEG4 clibs in that you have to start at a key frame otherwise it gets a little messy

Its a little easier with DVDs since there are usually 2 key frames per second (or more) where as MPEG4 will usually only have a key frame once every 10 seconds (240 frames) or on scene changes.

If you want to take a section of a MPEG4 clip (or even from a DVD if you are getting problems) you can tell mplayer to re-encode a larger section of the file (atleast 30 seconds either side of what you want) using raw audio and a key frame every frame. This will produce a very large file - but its only temporary and will enable you to grab the subsection that you want without the usual video mess the above command will give you.

Mplayer also has a method of printing out exactly where the key frames are, I can't remember it exactly off hand but its in the man page so shouldn't be hard to find. One problem I have found with mplayer is its granularity is seconds - atleast on the version I last used. I don't know of a way to specify timings by frame number (I would love to hear of a way if there is one!)

Re:DVD DEcryptor

[LunaticTippy]

Studios have been releasing defective DVDs for years. Most players deal OK but you need special ripping software.

Here is one I had to deal with recently. You can't tell by the box if/what copy protection they have. There are half a dozen commercial schemes right now.

Re:"But I only stole the hubcaps!"

[arete]

DorkusMasterus's comment is very informative about fair use. And I agree that copying is never stealing. (Note: IANAL)

HOWEVER:

The BIGGEST reason why the DMCA needs to be struck down is that it does an end-run around fair use. It is completely within fair use to use clips from a copyrighted work. It certainly depends on the amount, but sampling is definitely allowed.

What you _can't_ do under the DMCA is exactly what you're asking about: You can't circumvent copy protection no matter how trivial - and almost all commercial DVDs are encrypted. Under the DMCA (in the US only, of course) you can't legally do this EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE THE CLIP (under fair use) You can't even do this if YOU MADE the DVD. (Although presumably no one would sue you for that)

Strangely, this seems to mean that if someone anonymously sent you the clip you WOULD be able to use it. (I'm also not yet aware of a case where they went after anyone for viewing any number of "shared" files - to my knowledge they've only gone after claims that someone did the SHARING. But I think they have a potential traditional-copyright claim, it just doesn't give them the massive powers of the DCMA) Or if you recorded the clip from an analog or unencrypted digital video out on a legitimate DVD player. Or from a VCR. Note that HDMI is NOT unencrypted, which is why they want to put it on your devices and why you _don't_ want it - because that's not an output that you can legally decrypt stuff from unless you're an approved HDMI device.

Illumination

[HTH NE1]

You could go the traditional church route and get a bunch of monks to "illuminate" the excerpts you want by having them painstakingly reproduce each frame by hand and scan each frame back into a computer and sequence it for full motion playback. Get a few more trained in the foley arts and some excellent impressionists to get the soundtrack.

With the man hours involved, no one would dare accuse you of exploiting the works for profit.