Does anyone know of a software (or anything else for that matter) that will allow you to capture and print a still image off of a DVD movie playing on the mac? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
no no no... grab.app and snapzprox will only capture the "green" filler that the video card overlays the video on. there's a trick that nvidia users can do to get Snapz to capture DVD, but it is unsupported and may only work on a few specific systems.
Ok, here's a rather lengthy solution. You'd have to find this shareware called MacDVDExtractor. Use that to remove the copy protection (I assume that your talking about your own, homemade DVDs which you copy-protected yourself, of course). Then I would think their would be a way of loading the de-protected files into iDVD and THEN you might be able to capture it with grab.app.
I was recently delighted to figure out how to digitize copy protect DVDs. I've only tried this on ones I own the rights to, of course.
You'll need:
* Final Cut Pro (or iMovie, or something)
* a DV deck or camcorder
* an external DVD player (other than your Mac)
1) Your DV device (mine is a JVC SR-VS20 deck) needs to support ANALOG A/V input. Plug your DVD player into the A/V IN of your DV device.
2) Connect your DV device by FireWire to your Mac.
3) Play your DVD. The analog AV out is digitized by the DV device, then sent through FireWire to your Mac. Digitize whatever you feel like.
[NOTE: If you hit RECORD on your DV device while doing this, things will probably stop and you'll get a COPY GUARD kind of error. Even though my JVC deck doesn't allow me to RECORD a DVD to DV tape, it DOES allow me to pass the signal through to FireWire.
4) Try to play your digitized movie back in Final Cut. IT DOESN'T WORK! You can see stills, but not moving video. When you export those stills, you only get a white, empty square. Darn copy protection! But wait...
5) CROP your movie in Final Cut (I assume there's a way to do this in iMovie too). Your computer is seeing the copy protection signal somewhere on the edge of the frame. I cropped the video down to a size exactly the same size as the letterboxed image. So the image is unchanged, yet that pesky copyright info hidden at the edges IS NO MORE.
6) Render, then play back your video. Now it works! Grab stills, compress, edit, and burn video and audio back to a fresh DVD at will.
Don't do step 1 through 6 if you don't own the copyright to the DVD.
Let me know how this works for you.
Note: the trick is getting your DV device to pass the analog video through to FireWire. My JVC did it, but my tiny Sony camcorder would not. The problem: when you hook a FireWire up to the Sony, it assumes you want to record from FireWire. So you need a DV device that lets you manually set which input you'll be using (analog, in this case).
Do you speak from experience? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
No. It's just a guess. I've used DVDExtractor, but only played around with iDVD, but I would assume you would be able to edit an unprotected DVD. I mean, what if you made your own DVD, then wanted to edit it later to burn on a new one? You'd think iDVD would let you do this.
Comments
As for ripping a DVD, there are apps form Win32 that will help convert DVD data to MPEG, etc...
Do you speak from experience? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
I was recently delighted to figure out how to digitize copy protect DVDs. I've only tried this on ones I own the rights to, of course.
You'll need:
* Final Cut Pro (or iMovie, or something)
* a DV deck or camcorder
* an external DVD player (other than your Mac)
1) Your DV device (mine is a JVC SR-VS20 deck) needs to support ANALOG A/V input. Plug your DVD player into the A/V IN of your DV device.
2) Connect your DV device by FireWire to your Mac.
3) Play your DVD. The analog AV out is digitized by the DV device, then sent through FireWire to your Mac. Digitize whatever you feel like.
[NOTE: If you hit RECORD on your DV device while doing this, things will probably stop and you'll get a COPY GUARD kind of error. Even though my JVC deck doesn't allow me to RECORD a DVD to DV tape, it DOES allow me to pass the signal through to FireWire.
4) Try to play your digitized movie back in Final Cut. IT DOESN'T WORK! You can see stills, but not moving video. When you export those stills, you only get a white, empty square. Darn copy protection! But wait...
5) CROP your movie in Final Cut (I assume there's a way to do this in iMovie too). Your computer is seeing the copy protection signal somewhere on the edge of the frame. I cropped the video down to a size exactly the same size as the letterboxed image. So the image is unchanged, yet that pesky copyright info hidden at the edges IS NO MORE.
6) Render, then play back your video. Now it works! Grab stills, compress, edit, and burn video and audio back to a fresh DVD at will.
Don't do step 1 through 6 if you don't own the copyright to the DVD.
Let me know how this works for you.
Note: the trick is getting your DV device to pass the analog video through to FireWire. My JVC did it, but my tiny Sony camcorder would not. The problem: when you hook a FireWire up to the Sony, it assumes you want to record from FireWire. So you need a DV device that lets you manually set which input you'll be using (analog, in this case).
<strong>Nordstrodamus:
Do you speak from experience? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
No. It's just a guess. I've used DVDExtractor, but only played around with iDVD, but I would assume you would be able to edit an unprotected DVD. I mean, what if you made your own DVD, then wanted to edit it later to burn on a new one? You'd think iDVD would let you do this.
<strong>Nordstrodamus:
Do you speak from experience? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not that bored to go dig them up, but I am certain that screenshots of this effect were posted onto the MacNN forums sometime in the past.
<strong>jus use OS 9</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, gee, I just might as well just get a cheap PC to capture off my DVD's if I have to use such a craptastic OS.