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

1. USA, Canada, US Territories
2. Europe, South Africa, Middle East (incl. Egypt), Japan
3. Southeast Asia, East Asia (incl. Hong Kong) (see region 6)
4. Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America , Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean Region
5. Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6. Peoples Republic of China Region
7. -
8. International venues (planes , ships, etc.)

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.

Video editing software

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

1. Make sure you have installed free DVD ripping software like DVD Decrypter.
   Be aware that using this sort of software to copy and distribute commercially released DVDs is illegal.
   Using DVD decrypters for entirely private or demonstrably academic purposes is not illegal.
2. Make sure you have installed video editing software.
3. Insert the DVD you want to use into your computer’s DVD drive.
4. Open DVD Decrypter

B. Inside DVD Decrypter

1. Select the right source disc
   (I have put The Good, The Bad and the Ugly into G:).
2. Select the folder to which you want DVD Decrypter to write the decoded version of the DVD files.
3. Select all the files on the DVD.
4. Press the DVD icon to start the process.
5. Wait 20 minutes or so for the process to complete.

C. Inside your video editing software (here it's Vegas)

1. Open Vegas (or equivalent)
2. Select File —> Insert —> Media.
3. Select the relevant VOB file. I selected VTS_01_1.VOB because I want to edit the film’s title sequences. Note that a full-length VOB file (1 gig) is equivalent to around 25 minutes of DVD playing time.
4. Wait for the video and audio streams to load.
5. Mark off the passage you want to edit or extract. I chose from 0:00:15;26 to 0:02:59;26 (see next pic).
6. Select File —> Render to save the extract as a video file (AVI, MPG, etc.).
7. Edit the saved file as required.

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).

Saving stills

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):

1. Align the cursor on the exact frame you want to save as a still image file (at ‘1’ in image below).
2. Ensure the Video Preview resolution option is Best (Full) (‘2’ in image).
3. Press the diskette icon to name and save the image to disc (‘3’ in image).