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In Part 1 of this DVD-ripping guide for educators we learned how to use a program called Handbrake to rip a DVD to digital video. In this part, Part 2, we’re going to look at how to divide the outputted video into ‘chunks’, ready for use in lessons.

The program we are going to use to do this is called Avidemux, which is free, Open-Source, and available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Step 1

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Once you have installed Avidemux, open the program. It should look something like the screenshot above.

Step 2

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We need to choose MP4 under the Format menu.

Once this has been done, click on the folder icon at the top left-hand corner to locate the file with which you want to work.

Step 3

Locate the file you encoded in Part 1 of this guide and then press Open. An error similar to the one above may appear. Apart from the program author’s terrible grammar and spelling, don’t worry about it and simply press Yes.

Step 4

Using the controls at the bottom of Avidemux, select the part of the digital video you want to take as a clip.

Play and Stop the video

Forward and Back one frame

Forward and Back one keyframe (i.e. takes you to the point where the scene changes)

Set Start and End of section to include in clip

The easiest and quickest way of finding the section you want to include in your clip is to use the Slider to get to roughly where the section is. Then use the Keyframe buttons to fine-tune this a bit more. Then for frame-perfect positioning, use the forward and back Individual frame buttons. Click the A button to set the start of the section for your clip and the B button to set the end of the section for your clip.

Step 5

Once you have found the section you want to include in your clip, press the disk button next to the folder icon. It should say Save Video if you put your cursor over it. You will then be prompted where to save the clip. Choose the location and filename then press Save. You should see something similar to the screenshot below:

The process should not take very long as it is not actually encoding the video, merely taking a section out of an existing one and copying it to a new file.

Step 6

Go to the location you chose to save your clip and open it in a program such as Quicktime (free of charge with iTunes) or VLC. Repeat the above steps for as many clips as you want to take from your original ripped video.

Comments? Questions? Add them below!