How to get mpeg-2/4 clips from a DVD

[Poop Shoe]

Hey all,
I have a newbie question about encoding MPEG-2/4s,...I think.
First off, I own the DVDs I want to do this with, so Iam not trying to cheat someone by copying the whole movie to sell or steal.
All I want to know is, how do I copy a small clip from a DVD, like scene I think is utterly hilarious and want to email it to somebody, or make it really small to use in my signiture, or as an avatar.
How do I "cut" out a section and "record" it? Is there a specific encoding program? I have heard that MPEG-4 is awesome at keeping compression, but it takes a ton of horse power to encode and many people may not have the proper codec to view it.
So, shouold I just try and do this to MPEG-2 format?
Thanks for helping a video newbie out,
Shoe

 

[bamacre]

If you have zero knowledge on dvd "ripping" and don't plan on putting some time in learning, then I recommend just ripping the whole movie using a fast n' easy program like Fair Use to convert the DVD to an mpeg4 .avi file encoded with DivX or Xvid.

It'll take from 2 to 10 hours (depending on your system) to encode, so run it overnight. For me it takes about one and a half hours to do a 2-hour movie on a 3.2Ghz P4 with a gb of ram. In comparison, roughly 4 hours on a P4 1.4ghz with 512MB of ram, and 12+ hours on a 900mhz Duron with 512MB of pc100 (yes, I have done this).

You can then open the .avi file with VirtualDub and create smaller .avi's with whatever parts you like. You can also save a scene (or the whole movie) as an "image sequence," which is just a series of bitmaps (or jpeg's if you like) of each frame. I assume you know what to do from here on.

 

[Poop Shoe]

Thanks Bamacre,
I was hoping there was a program like DVD shrink where you could go in and preview the movie in a small window and select areas to rip.
I guess I will tyr it your way until someone suggests anything easier/better.
Thanks
Shoe

 

[tekno82]

try dvdrhelp.com, and doom9.net for all your encoding info, from the most basic to some really advanced techniques.

to just make an avatar, id say just take screenshots of some of the frames spanning that scene and piece em together in a gif. you cant put fullmotion vid in an avatar...that i know of.

 

[HappyNic]

even with Fairuse you should still beable to preview what you want to encode., try it.
but if you want to get good, and encode good quality stuff you really need to test them out to see which programs works best for you...
You can also try DVDx.

I haven't done encoding for a pretty long time now,,, but I can tell you that it might look hard at first but after a couple of trys, it'll will get easier and easier. Try and try some more. With your system and the current program it should be a walk through the park. Compare to my old 1g system,, boy did it take a long time.