on 9/6/04 5:29 PM, ansberry at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Okay, I have not searched the archives for this info, but bear with me. > I just don't have a lot of extra time on my hands right now. > My 18 year old son was killed in a bicycle/truck accident a month ago. > I have a dvd a friend of his made of some video of them doing typical > teenage boy stuff. Just hanging out. It was made with Premier on a PC. I > want to take this video, import it to my Mac, and pull still images from it. > (there are some priceless shots of my son, Joey) It is compressed, and I > don't know what compression was used. It shows up in iMovie, Premier, and > Final Cut Express as grayed out files. I can't access them at all. I can't > even play them. The dvd plays fine on my dvd player with my TV. I have 2 > copies of the video. One in -R and one in +R. Neither will work at all on > my 900. > My computer specs are: > S900 > G4-450 processor > 848 megs of ram > Final Cut Express > iMovie > OS 9.1, 9.2, 10.2.8 > > I also have access to Premier at school, and will get my own copy if > necessary. > > Any help that you can give me would be greatly appreciated. > > Mike >
Hi Mike: Firstly, my heartfelt condolences with regard to your son. The DVD most likely contains multiplexed MPEG 2/.aif files (the standard DVD format). There are a couple of ways to get this back to a format that Final Cut Express/Pro or Premiere can use (DV Video), or iMovie can use (DV Stream). 1) One method would be to use software to first "demultiplex" the files on the DVD to MPEG2/.aif files, then to convert these files to DV Video. Here's a link which explains what software to use/how to do it: <http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCD_on_a_Macintosh.txt> Scroll down about halfway in the article to get to the relevant info. It's somewhat complex, but because you're only wanting to grab stills from the video, some of the audio conversion problems won't be relevant. 2) An easier method (and from what I've heard, the quality is just as good or maybe better) would be to plug the video output from you're DVD player into either a Video --> Firewire converter (Canopus, Sony, etc. make these) or a DV Camcorder with pass-thru and capture it directly (via FireWire) into Final Cut Express, iMovie, etc. if those are available to you. 3) Perhaps your son's friend has the original video tapes (probably some sort of DV tape?) and would let you borrow his camcorder to capture the video directly into your computer (assuming you have a FW card) - that would probably be the easiest (and highest quality) method. Please feel free to e-mail me (either via this forum or directly) if you have any more questions. -- Gregg -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
