Getting a DVD into Windows Live Movie Maker

I really enjoy using Windows Live Movie Maker to preform basic edits on my home videos. Recently, I've been given some older home videos that were taken using a Canon DC-210, which is one of those video cameras that saved the video directly to a DVD.

The DVDs I have are in standard DVD format, and can easily be played by a normal DVD player. However, when I tried importing them into Live Movie Maker to do some editing, only a small part (I believe the 1st chapter) is seen by the program, and the rest is ignored.

So how can I get Live Movie Maker to see & import the entire raw video?

yydl

Posted 2011-06-10T23:07:34.050

Reputation: 333

Answers

Movie Maker probably won't import directly from a DVD since most DVDs are copyrighted. (Standard video DVDs are a little more complicated than just a video file on a disc, which would be a data DVD.)

You'll need to get the video off of the DVD using software like Handbrake, and then opening it using Windows Live Movie Maker.

Stacey Hanson

Posted 2011-06-10T23:07:34.050

Reputation: 916

Copyright? It's a home dvd! So no encryption, and yes, I can get the files off the dvd and onto my hard-drive. The problem is that movie maker won't import the files correctly... – yydl – 2011-06-12T02:02:12.520

Right, but I'm saying Microsoft probably made the decision not to enable importing directly from a DVD (for any DVDs - personal or copyrighted) because of the copyright issue. Have you confirmed that you can view the entire DVD directly from the video files you ripped in another movie player, like VLC? – Stacey Hanson – 2011-06-13T00:56:46.323

Yes, I can play the entire video in VLC. The VOB file is >800 MB, yet WLMM only wants to see the first half-second of it. – yydl – 2011-06-13T01:05:05.393

VOB files are meant for DVD players. (It's no different than copying and pasting the files off of a DVD. VLC is magic, so it can play anything :D) You'll need to rip the DVD using Handbrake to something like an MP4 file, which is an actual video file, so WLMM can read it. These instructions should help explain how to rip to an MP4 using Handbrake (however, choose "Normal" as your preset, not iPod, or it'll import using a lower quality): http://www.iskysoft.com/article/how-to-rip-dvds-with-handbrake.html

– Stacey Hanson – 2011-06-13T01:19:36.983

But won't that anyways result in a degradation of quality? – yydl – 2011-06-13T01:21:06.777

I would use Avidemux to load the first larger VOB file from the DVD and Avidemux automatically indexes it and asks whether to append the other ones. Select yes and after loading the whole video select in the left panel Copy both for Audio and Video and save the video (Ctrl+S) with the "mpg" extension (Avidemux often forgets to add a extension).

I think that Movie Maker should be able to load this video, because it is the same format and no recompression was made so there is now quality loss.

Juhele

Posted 2011-06-10T23:07:34.050

Reputation: 2 297