I am a teacher, and over the years I've collected videos and DVD's of various things which I show my kids. At this point, I have everything I need on DVD. What I'd really like to do is to extract small sections for teaching purposes. In some cases, it's because I need to eliminate something off-color or inappropriate, usually language. For example, a movie about Christopher Columbus I have used for years that shows the voyage in a colorful and exciting way, but smack in the middle of the sequence a sailor says something really risque. I have always skipped ahead, turned down the sound for a second, etc, etc. (Really Mickey Mouse...) I have the same problem in other movies (I use a sequence in Spinal Tap, believe it or not, that illustrates a math principle, but I need to excise an F-bomb in the middle of it. What I'd like ideally is to have a DVD that shows exactly the excerpts I want in a convenient and accesible way. much of the material I'd like to use would definitely be copyright-protected; my usage would be purely educational. Can I do this?
Not legally; I think this would be outside your fair-use rights. You always could write the copyright holder, explain your situation, and see if they'll permit you to backup the copy-protected material to hard disk and to edit out the objectionable stuff. Some copyright-holders are quite reasonable, myself included. It's amazing how few people will bother to even ask. But for the material that ISN'T copyright-protected, just back it up to hard disk and import all the VOB files into Womble MPEG Video Wizard. You drag each VOB file into the left-hand video window, mark-in/out the parts you want, skipping over the undesirable stuff, and then drag the image from the left-hand window into the timeline. Ulead VideoStudio also has similar features, though you'll need a recent version if you want reliability.
