Importing (ripping) a movie from a DVD

Hi

Commersial (bought) DVDs - No not even possibly to discuss here.

Home made privat ones. I use Roxio Toast™ to back-convert to steamingDV
to be able to use in iMovie (or FCE/P).

BUT - The quality will never be the same due to compressing into DVD from start.

Yours Bengt W

You need to convert the VOB files back to DV which iMovie is designed to handle. For that you need mpegStreamclip:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html

which is free, but you must also have the Apple mpeg2 plugin :

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

which is a mere $20.

Another possibility is to use DVDxDV:

http://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookSite/Products/DVDxDV.overview.htm

which costs $25.

Obviously the foregoing only applies to DVDs you have made yourself, or other home-made DVDs that have been given to you. It will NOT work on copy-protected commercial DVDs, which in any case would be illegal.

I am a little illiterate when it comes to all the tech terminology. With that said here is my question after reading several replies.

I have home movies on Hi 8 tapes. My camera broke and I am borrowing one to get my movies on to DVD format. I know how to download to either iMovie or to burn straight to a DVD through iDVD. What I would like to do is download the movies in a format where I can use them later to make my own movies on iMovie. When I used iDVD and did a "One Step DVD" it put the movies in a format that I cannot put back in the computer and edit on iMovie.
Do I need to save two copies? One straight from iDVD in the "One Step DVD" option to just watch and another in the iMovie under the feature "Burn Project to Disc..." that creates a duplicate of the project onto a CD or DVD ROM. It does not create a video DVD for playing in a DVD player.

I hope this is understandable. Thanks for any help.

IMHO Saving your old formats to DVD is not a real good idea. You take a quality hit when you do so. It would be better to dub them to DV tape for later editing.

Think of it this way. dv runs about 13gig/hour. If you take and put and hour onto a 4.75 gig dvd you are going to lose something somewhere. When you convert it back to dv from a DVD there isn't any magic that expands back what you lost. Best to put on DV and edit later.