DVD clips, frontpage, help Options

[Epic]

hello computer gurus

I'm putting together a presentation on leadership styles and i'm using clips of the show Lost to illustrate my points. What I'm trying to figure out is how I can cut down the clips to just the parts that I want to use instead of the entire scene. I've added video clips to powerpoint before so that's not the problem.

So my questions are:

What program do you recommend that would allow me to take dvd scenes and edit them?

Do you recommend anything other than powerpoint for this kind of a project?

Thanks

[chook]

if you have a tv tuner with macrovision disabled would be the easiest. Otherwise you have to rip the vob file find a prog that will rip it for you.


somebody else probably has a better answer

[Epic]

I've already ripped the episodes off of dvd. I have all of the files sitting on my harddrive and I can open scenes separately without much trouble.

I guess any video editing software would work but I'm so far behind in knowing what works well that I thought i'd turn here before i just make a stab in the dark

[Frantic]

Are they still in Vob's on your computer, or have you compressed them to something DivX like? If you have an avi or mpg it is fairly easy to cut out scenes.

Not real sure about uncompressed clips.

[Epic]

alright, i've made some progress

I'm using MPEG2cut to cut the scenes directly from the VOB format. I understand that powerpoint can import mpeg2 files.

The bullshit that has popped up is i'm getting the commentary audio track whenever I cut the scenes so I have to go back and rerip the dvd files correctly.

And not to mention that after I cut the scenes from this format, a 60 second clip seems to be like 300mb.

I'm working my way through it and surprisingly learning some shit.

[Frantic]

If a 60 second clip is 300mb then MPEG2cut isn't compressing the file (I don't have any vob's or mpg's lying around to test that on though).

Are you giving your presentation through your computer or someone elses? I know that my laptop has all the codecs for playing compressed video but I can't speak for anyone else's laptop.

If it's yours I would suggest compressing it in Divx or Xvid (Personally I used Xvid) giving you a decent size. There are all kinds of guides and all the programs used here. That is where I got my start.

[Epic]

Thanks, I think I may have found my way around some video compression software and I will be running it off my laptop. I've updated most of my codecs regularly but now would be a good time to check that.

The thing is I have to be careful because I need this to be good video quality anyway since its going to be projected onto a large screen.

[Epic]

good news!

everything is reripped, the correct audio stream, high quality cuts that are of reasonable size (around 10 megs per 30 seconds).

Now just getting my powerpoint to accept them is proving itself to be the next challenge.

[Epic]

success! I'm not a complete idiot.

mods, feel free to lock this thread now.