Three more brief questions, and Thanks for Help

[tim.iles@utoronto.ca]

I'll mention the Region issue first--for MacOS X 10.3 (and I certainly
believe this should be the same for 10.4 Tiger), to play back any region
DVD, first change the System Preference _not_ to launch DVD Player when
you insert a DVD--it's not the drive as such that's the problem, but
rather Apple's DVD Player application, which requires a region to be set.
If you tell the System Preferences not to launch DVD Player, then your Mac
will happily mount any region DVD.

So how do you play it? Well, with another program--VLC, a free,
open-source media player available at:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

It's multi-platform and plays everything from DVDs, VCDs, to .mov and OGM
files handily. (And as an aside, while VLC is playing content in
full-screen mode, using Command-Shift-3 you can make very nice screen
captures to create stills.)

As far as "ripping" a Region 2 DVD, again, so long as your Mac doesn't try
to play the DVD with Apple's DVD Player, there's no problem inserting and
mounting the DVD. Mac the Ripper will extract (and de-region encode) a DVD
from any region (strictly for Fair Use, legal, back-up purposes, of
course.)

And for full-featured DVD authoring, a number of packages are
available--DVD Studio Pro from Apple is popular but pricey, Final Cut
Express is another choice, as is its bigger sibling, Final Cut Pro (quite
pricey but it should be able to create anything.)

Again, I missed the original post, so I'm not completely sure what your
final goal is, and I'm sorry for such a "technical" reply (and
Mac-specific, to boot!), but I hope this will help. Feel free to contact
me off list, if you wish.

Best,


Tim Iles
University of Victoria