VLC Media Player Question

[Oak Kitten]

I have been trying unsuccessfully to extract some video clips from a DVD using VLC media player and am having problems. I have done it successfully before but this time I can't figure out what I am doing incorrectly.

The time indicator on the DVD file segment from which I am trying to extract the clips starts at 29:XX minutes and runs to about 55:XX minutes. When you extract a segment on VLC to save to a file, the wizard directs you to enter the beginning and ending times in SECONDS. Okay.

So I tried it first by converting the 29:XX into seconds and the ending time of 34:XX into seconds. That did not work. So then I tried making the 29:XX equal to 0 as it is the beginning of the file segment and the counted to the end of the clip segment. That did not work either. All I get is about a 2- second long clip.

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong, or can point me in the direction of where I can find some comprehensible instructions on how to do this? I have tried looking on the web, but evrything I find is extremely technical and way beyond my basic question, which is "How do you make this damn thing work?" The download did not come with any VLC for tech-tards instructions.

Oak

[paularoid]

The download did not come with any VLC for tech-tards instructions.
ROFL :D

I've seen that it has that ability but have never messed with it that way - yet. I'll see what I can dig up and report back what I find if anything. No promises but I'll take a deeper look into it. <giggling at "VLC for tech-tards" remark> :D

[Oak Kitten]

Thanks for looking into it, Paul, I was hoping you might be able to ride to the rescue of a damsel (okay, an old broad) in distress.

Oak

[paularoid]

Haven't found anything yet. Still looking. Nothing has leaped out and slapped me in the face about it anyway. I know it can be done but I don't know exactly how to go about doing it. As I said,... still looking.....

[Oak Kitten]

Paul,

Yeah, same here. I can't believe with all the stuff out there that no one thought to post really basic "How to" instructions. I guess all the computer whizzes think NOBODY can be THAT dumb (Yo! Over here! Waving arms wildly. . .)

Oak

[paularoid]

What I DID find was something that you already found yourself in that you had to input the location of the piece that you wish to clip from and you have to set the boundaries of the desired clip in seconds. In other words, you have to specify where the beginning location of the clip occurs in terms of seconds and the same for the end of the desired clip. Sounds like a real pain to me and that's probably why I've never dealt with that before. I'll try to alot some time to that though so that I can do such things for me and then pass the information along to all that want it.

ALSO.....

in one of the "help popups" it mentioned that you have to have control over the piece that you wish to clip from. In other words, the piece must exist on your hard drive/system. You can't do it with a streaming piece.

[paularoid]

I tried it and it worked like a charm..... as long as I picked the right combination of formats and codecs to export to and with. First time I tried it I fouled up because I picked an oddball video format to export to (mp4) and used the mp3 codec for the sound. Didn't work so well. All I got was a vid with a really tall viewing area, black screen, and garbled sound. Second time I did it I used the simplest mpeg1 format for the video and mpeg output for the audio and it went off without a hitch. This was done using a two minute and 43 second long clip. I plugged in to start at 0 seconds and end at 90 seconds and that's what I got.

Of course your mileage may vary. ;)