Bill Kirkpatrick: Clip DVD Tutorial
Jeremy Butler and I wrote a tutorial on how to put together a clip DVD on the Mac from other DVDs. You can also access it from Jeremy’s TV Criticism website here. Or you can download it as a PDF here (1 MB).
HOW TO QUICKLY ASSEMBLE A DVD OF FILM CLIPS ON A MAC
By Bill Kirkpatrick and Jeremy Butler. This tutorial may not be reproduced for commercial purposes. However, educational and other non-commercial uses are permitted, if proper attribution is given. Please see the Creative Commons License for details. Please send suggestions or corrections to mwkirkpa(at)gmail.com.
This is a brief tutorial designed to show how to quickly assemble a simple DVD of film clips on a Mac. The tutorial assumes that you will be pulling your clips from commercial DVDs, and that your Mac is equipped with a DVD burner.
The following instructions are not the only way to do this, but this is a very quick and reliable system. Also, there are many programs that will help you extract and convert video from DVDs, but the ones used in this tutorial are free, stable, and well established.
PLEASE NOTE: This tutorial assumes that you are a film instructor. The U.S. Copyright Office has issued an exception to the DMCA that allows film instructors to circumvent copyright protection for the purpose of assembling clip tapes. Please respect all copyright laws, no matter how inane or unconstitutional.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
1. A Mac running an updated version of OS X
2. A DVD burner (either an external burner or a built-in CD/DVD reader/burner, which Apple calls a SuperDrive)
3. Two free programs: Mac the Ripper and MPEG Streamclip. Both of these programs are mature, stable, and safe for your computer. Instructions for downloading them are below.
4. One program that is probably already on your Mac: iDVD.
THE PROCESS IN A NUTSHELL:
1. Download the programs you will need.
2. Rip the rough clip you want using Mac the Ripper.
3. Select the exact clip you want (to the frame) and convert it to Quicktime using MPEG Streamclip.
4. Burn the clip to DVD using iDVD.