How to Decrypt Full Resolution DVD Files
Submitted by VPhan on Wed, 01/13/2010 - 8:27am
Here is a trick I was taught by the greatest editor I ever had the pleasure of working with.
NOTE: Please understand and respect the copyright issues, if any, for any DVD that you are going to use this process on. In some cases, there may be legal issues that you may need to address with making a copy of a DVD even for personal use. We at OCSWA do not in any way condone the practice of abridging the rights of a copyright holder on his or her material and hope that no one will use this process to do anything illegal.
So have you ever tried to load DVD footage into Final Cut Pro and realized that it doesn't work that way? The reason why is because the footage is still encrypted and compressed.
Here is how you solve that problem. Make sure you have a lot of hard drive space before you attempt this. A decrypted full resolution movie file is huge. I did this to Hellboy and it turned out to be 90 GB.
Enjoy!
There are two dependable ways to import footage from DVD using only software. The more reliable way is to use a free program called MPEG Streamclip. IT has a lot of customizable export options for DVDs.
It's fairly simple:
- Go to versiontracker.com and search for the program. Download it, and load a DVD in the comp.
- Go to File in the program, and select Open DVD - just select the DVD drive, it should have a VIDEO TS and AUDIO folder, you don't have to select either of these, just make sure MPEG Streamclip is looking at them.
- Select open
- If a pop up window occurs saying it has broken timecode, allow it to fixit. If another popup window occurs asking you to select which video to load, you'll have to play the trial and error game to see the right vid you want (The program has no way of naming the files itself since writing to DVD is an encoded process)
- Select the part of the DVD you want to export via the "I" and "O" shortcuts (for In and Out)
- Go to File, Export, and do whatever settings you'd like. I always use an Uncompressed 4:2:2 for broadcast quality, 100% quality, and use "Unscaled" for the size dimensions. One thing you want to be careful though, is to make sure to deselect the "Reinterlace" footage options in the middle of the page.
After that, it'll encode it and you'll have a nice Quicktime version of your movie.
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One small note . . .
One small note. The use of the term "full resolution" is somewhat subjective and in this case also not exactly correct.
DVDs have a native resolution of 720x480. Yes, even the 16x9 stuff. Additionally DVDs are compressed rather heavily. While it's more than possible to get workable footage from a DVD and into Final Cut using various pieces of software and methods, it's virtually impossible to reconstruct "full resolution" footage from them. It's a little like taking a icon or thumb nail and trying to enlarge it to make a 8x10. It's certainly possible, but the compression process lost valuable information that can never really be recovered. Additionally, "full resolution" for today's projects usually means 1920x1080 and even Blu-ray is compressed from the original 4:4:4 HD stuff most DVDs and Blu-rays are currently made from.
I always recommend producers attempt to go back to source material rather than just pulling it from a DVD. However, sometimes a DVD is the only copy you have access to. I know a lot of folks that worked on stuff years ago, want to build demo reels and it's the only thing they have. In that case, this kind of information can be a lifesaver.
Another piece of open source (free), multi-platform (Mac or PC) software I find helpful is HandBrake.
http://handbrake.fr/