First, why I needed to know this.

I have clients from time to time who have self produced videos on a DVD they would like to add to their websites, either progressively streaming off of their hosting server or through one of the myriad of video sharing sites (ala YouTube, Blip.TV, Vimeo etc.)

In the past, when we were a PC only web shop it frankly was easy.  Rip the VOB file you need as an AVI (with something as simple as Pinnacle), convert to FLV and that was it basically.

However on the MAC (Specifically MacBook Pro with Mac OS X 10.5.6) I found it a bit more of a challenge without investing in more apps for a purpose that doesn’t come up all that often.  Let’s face it, I’m cheap.  It shouldn’t be that hard.

Let me be clear, I’m not talking about commercial, copyrighted material. These are in-house production quality videos that my client,  XYZ company, shot of someone using their auger system, of making a cappuccino, or whatever.

That said, I found this solution in bits and pieces on a various forums  and was able to create my own work-flow that I will now share.

The Problem

Basically with DVD video you have files called VOB (video object files).  You may have several VOB files on the same disc if you have chapters of several smaller videos on the same disc.  OK, that said,  the problem is getting iMovie, let’s say, to recognize a VOB.  It won’t.  Hence you cannot import it. The image to the right show these files.  Notice the dark color of the files.  When you look at them in iMovie they will be grayed out, meaning they are not a valid file type for iMovie as such.

The Solution

The key then is simply getting the VOB file in a format iMovie will import.  It’s actually very simple.  You just need to make a disk image (.dmg).  Here’s how.

1. Insert your DVD
2. Open the Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility)
3. Your DVD should show up in the upper left hand corner under yo other drives (HDD, any external, etc.)
4. Highlight it and choose New Image from the toolbar.
5. I used the default settings in the drop down and save it to the desktop (or wherever you choose)
6. Click SAVE.

Let Disk Utility chew on that a few minutes and presto-chango you have a disk image (.dmg) of your DVD.

Now, with iMovie open, you have to “mount” the disk image by double-clicking on the .dmg file (the disk image file) you created.

Next  iMovie’s IMPORT window will pop-up and you will notice that the disk image is recognized as ….a camera!  How about that.

Now choose IMPORT ALL and get to editing once it is in iMovie.  That’s it!

Assuming you know how to export, you’ll end up with a .M4V file that can be uploaded and let  YouTube, Vimeo, et al, do the rest.

One note: Occasionally  you may get errors when importing and from my experience this is most often because the disk I am working from is a bad/damaged copy.

Hope this is helpful in getting you going the right direction.

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DISCLAIMER: Note that this is relating my own experience using iMovie 08 and this process.  This may or may not work with other versions of iMovie.  Be sure and check the comments as several others have tried other solutions with other versions of iMovie and found work-arounds.  The idea for this was a collaborative place to share ideas.