On Feb 7, 2007, at 0:19, Lou Thompson wrote: > It's obviously possible to copy short clips from DVDs--I've seen > many people use these clips in presentations. It just seems that > no one is willing to share how it is done. I can tell you how I do it on a Mac. Someone else will have to chime in for PCs. This process is getting continually easier. To do what you are wanting to do, I have downloaded two free programs, both of which are fairly mature and stable: Mac the Ripper and MPEG Streamclip (links below). In Mac the Ripper, you can pull the data off of the DVD, including encrypted DVDs and DVDs from other regions, and remove all that encryption and region-encoding. You can choose to rip the whole movie, individual chapters, the DVD extras, or all of it. I usually just rip the chapter that has the clip I want. It can get glitchy with subtitles or alternative soundtracks and commentary, but that's probably just my own incompetence. As you point out, we are no longer criminals for doing this, despite the program's unsavory name and logo. Once the data is ripped, open it in MPEG Streamclip. There you can set the in and out points as in any digital editor, then export it in a range of file formats. I export it as a Quicktime file. Finally, you can import that Quicktime file into Premiere, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, etc. in order to further manipulate it (e.g. add a couple of seconds of black at the beginning and end). Or, if you're not as anal as I am, you can just drop it straight into an iDVD project to build a DVD with all your clips on it. Or, in your case, straight into Powerpoint. There's a lot of processing involved, but for a short clip you can go from source DVD to final clip "tape" in a couple of hours, largely unattended. For Mac the Ripper, go to: www.mactheripper.org. For MPEG Streamclip, go to www.squared5.com. Hope that helps, and good luck! --Bill ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu