I am looking for the quickest and easiest way to get movie snippets (usually less than 1 minute each) from my DVDs into PowerPoint (PP). (If this is the wrong forum, would a forum administrator or moderator kindly move it?) I incorporate the snippets into my PP lectures (using Microsoft Producer) to illustrate points and to keep my students awake.

I have done it with the combination of DVD Decrypter, DVD2AVI and TMPGEnc Plus. But it takes me a long time to get just that little scene I want. I need to do this many, many times, so I am looking for a faster way. I don't mind spending some money to get the right tool. It's my time that is at a premium.

The quality of the audio/video isn't a major concern. It just needs to be intelligible. With that in mind, I tried to capture the scene playing in PowerDVD 4 with Camtasia Studio, but it didn't seem to work (very possibly some mistake I am making).

Thanks for any advice you knowledgeable people can provide.

Don't know what PowerPoint can accept in terms of video, but you may be able to just cut the scenes out. Otherwise you could use AVISynth and encode to AVI using say single pass DivX. Just set up all your scenes in a batch encode, come back and they should be all done.

I run PowerPoint 2002 and in its help file iit quotes

Can I use my DVD to add a digital video movie?

This isn't possible in Microsoft PowerPoint 2002. However, some third-party companies manufacture add-ins that allow PowerPoint to play DVD video during a presentation.

I dont know what the program(s) MS are refering to, but maybe a search via Google may find something.

Thanks for the advice. I'll try out what both of you suggest.

The message in the help file surprises me a little. (I'm also using PowerPoint 2002). Granted, PP won't accept DVD video directly/natively. Through MS Producer (v1.1), however, I can import AVI, MPEG, etc. So, I am first converting my DVDs to one of those formats and importing into Producer for use in PP.

I appreciate your help.

With DVD2AVI you can select the clip you want (using slidder) from a VOB file and then actually save as an AVI. Not the best way of making an AVI but it can be done and quality doesnt have to be 100% as you quoted.