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How to get footage from a DVD

Dartfish Software 4.5 and higher:

The software now offers you a new module to Import your DVD's inside the software. To access it, simply click the "File" menu and select "DVD Import..."


Dartfish Software 4.0:

Here are three ways of getting DVD footage to work in your software:

Method 1: Finding, copying and renaming the .VOB files

This method is the faster one, but is not guaranteed to work all the time. It may work with a DVD and not with another. Please also note that this method is only valid for Dartfish Software version 4 and higher.

Pre-requisite:

  • Click 'Start' menu, 'My Computer'.
  • Select the 'Tools' menu, then 'Folder Options...'
  • Click the 'View' tab
  • In 'Advanced settings:', find the option 'Hide extensions for known file types' and make sure it is deactivated. If not, please do.

Now, please follow these steps:

  • Click 'Start' menu, 'My Computer'
  • Identify your DVD reader, right-click on it, and select 'Explore'
  • You should see a 'VIDEO_TS' folder. Double-click it.
  • You should now see different files with a .VOB extension. Select them all and copy them somewhere on your computer.
  • Once you're finished copying, manually rename each .VOB file to .mpg

(filename.VOB -> filename.mpg)

You should be all set! Now try to open one of the files in the Player or Analyzer module of Dartfish Software.

In case it doesn't work, you will have to use either the second or third method.


Method 2: Capturing the video out signal from a DVD Player on the computer

This method is quite easy, but requires specific hardware and some time as you will have to play the full length of the DVD to record it simultaneously.

What you need:

  • A normal DVD Player for TV
  • A video converter
Basically, you will connect the video converter to the computer (USB connection) and the DVD Player's video signal to the converter's input. Then, you will play the DVD and record it using Dartfish DV Import module.

To know more about video converters, please have a look at this document: http://www.dartfish.com/camcorders under the "Video to DV Converter" and "Video to MPEG-2 Converter" sections.

If you have any questions regarding this setup, feel free to contact our technical support department by filling a support ticket there: http://www.dartfish.com/support/request


Method 3: Using a DVD-rip software

This method is time-consuming, and for this reason should only be used by people that are unable to deploy the setup described in Method 2.

The DVD-ripping process consists of extracting the video streams of the DVD, and re-encode them in another format, usually AVI. The whole process is software-based.

There are a lot of DVD-rip softwares on the market. Here is a non-exhaustive list of softwares we succesfully tested:

Please refer to each product's documentation for instructions of use.

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