Can anyone recommend sw product(s) which will help me select short snippets from commercial movie DVDs for use in a PowerPoint or similar presentation?
Google I would urge you to Google the issue to learn about movie editing, read over the features of many free and commercial apps, review how to import clips inot PP, and choose what is best suited to your needs. In a word, there are many good apps that accomplish the task. Monk
Mpeg2VCR can directly edit VOB files on a DVD, you can cut and paste and easily remove sections, or reedit the entire DVD Mpeg2 stream. No re-encoding, it just copies out the section you select. You might need anyDVD to decrypt the movie depending on the protection it has. Another method is to rip the entire DVD using anydvd and any ripper to native mpeg2 (like magic DVD ripper for example), then edit it quickly with mpeg2VCR....as VOB's are broken into 1 Gb files, if the video you want spans a break, you can join them using mpeg2VCR too if you don't have a DVD ripper. There are other methods too, but this is pretty simple. This will result in native DVD mpeg2 files.
To good points of information posted before but the main problem will be commercial dvd are protected you would neen to copy them with a program for example DVDFab 5 but even then for you to add them to powerpoint presentation , you could get hit with copyright laws especially if the clips are from a movie.
Proper citations....credit where credit is due. You should ALWAYS cite sources..Other than legal problems, it is only ethical..
I know this is an old thread, but afterdawn.com is great site to learn about all aspects of video, movie and audio editing and compiling.