It seems more and more common that editors are being asked to use content from a DVD- perhaps the client has provided you with last years annual report DVD… and wants you to redit it. (Remember, ripping off copyrighted content is a Federal offense with imprisonment and large fines possible!)
You can use MacTheRipper or OSEx to get the content from a DVD on your hard drive (OS X only)
MPEG Streamclip is an application that converts MPEG files (including transport streams) into muxed, demuxed, QuickTime, AVI and DV files. http://www.squared5.com/
For editing from a regular MPEG2 DVD, you can choose DV (smallest file) or uncompressed (higher quality but much larger file)
ffmpeg will convert to DV or many other formats.
HandBrake is cross-platform and will output MP4, H.264, OGM or AVI from DVD content.
MacAC3Dec — Convert the AC3 sound files used on DVDs to AIFF
MacMPEG2Decoder 1.0b7 — Convert MPEG files extracted from DVD into another video format with Quicktime
More info in this article.
DV Enlightenment
After Effects PowerStart
Final Cut Pro Foundations 
Motion PowerStart
LiveType PowerStart
Bogen Tripods
Miller Tripods
SteadyTracker
Steady Stick
Skycrane Jr.
Tiffen Filters
Wide angle lenses
FireStore FS-4 Direct to Edit
Edirol Video Mixers
Reflecmedia 
Serious Magic
DVcreator Light Kits
Photoflex Reflectors
LitePanels LED lights
Lowel Ego light
BeachTek XLR Adapters
RODE Mics
Sennheiser Mics
Apple Computers
G-RAID Hard drives
Lacie Hard drives
Digital Speakers
Video Processor / DV Converter
Nattress Film Effects FCP Plugin
SonicFire Pro
Sorenson Squeeze
Primera DVD Duplicator
Matters of Light & Depth
Editing Techniques with FCP
APTS : DVD Studio Pro 4
APTS: FCP Advanced FX Book
FCP Visual QuickPro Guide
There is an app for pro results in this DVD-to-edit job.
It’s called DVDxDV and is by far the best solution, since it does this conversion very nicely, in one single pass (extracting then encoding with ffmpeg works -and that’s how i do it- but you have to deal with the sound in a second pass)
It even allows you to extract to a 10bits uncompressed file, with awesome results (if the DVD was encoded fine that is)
But if you are looking for a free solution, mactheripper (or yadeX) then ffmpegX to encode in DV is the way to go. just remember to make two passes : one for picture, one for sound, then merge them in FCP, save as a standalone moovie, and this is your “media” file to start editing with.
mpegstreamclip will get you from VOB to a range of formats in one go:
http://www.squared5.com/
(and it’s a lot faster than ffmpeg
)
Here is another, an open source Windows app:
http://www.planetdvb.net/staxrip/
Just heard of iSquint, at isquint.org also!
…okay, iSquint is simply a GUI front end over the ‘ffmpeg’ program. So it essentially makes using ‘ffmpeg’ easier.
When using Handbrake, if I want the best quality video file to be imported, what format should I use? (eg. avi, mp4, h.264)
I am getting sporadic audio dropouts when I ‘export to quicktime’ my VOB files. I’m an exporting in progressive format with IMA 4:1 audio format at 48khz. I have also tried using Uncompressed audio at 48khz. I can’t figure out what the problem is. Any ideas?
Uncompressed is what you want.
What are you using? Handbrake? ffmpegx? MacTheRipper?
when importing my Video TS folder into final cut express, it says it doesnt recognise the files and wont import them. Any idea how i can fix this?
This is all so confusing. Why can’t their just be something that rips a DVD into files that Final Cut can read automatically? Why would I want to rip VOB files and the like anyway. If I want to copy a DVD, I can do that on my home DVD player which costs much less than a Mac and Final Cut editing software!
Another option, maybe less popular because of “shell shock” of the GUI generation, is to use vobcopy. For popular Linux distros, it is snap to install. It is a shell application that you can do a few things with. One is mirror the DVD to hard drive. For OSX, just install Fink and do the “apt-get install” thing. I find it’s slow on OSX but on my Linux box it rips fast.
This is just odd. In Premiere, all I had to do was install an MPEG 2 codec and I can edit VOB files with sound directly….. Why is there no solution like this for FCP?