Home Forums Peripherals & Multimedia Audio, Video, Photography Transfer video to a DVD and a thumb drive

I need to send some video/audio to a friend in another city. His preference is to plug a thumb drive into his computer or smart TV.

Here's the material. I have a DVD with three cuts, dubbed from my Sony tape camera many years ago (1997). The DVD comes up on iDVD with the three cuts menu. It plays back this way on both on my iMac and on my DVD player.

Here's what I've accomplished. Using Dick Utility I've made a .cdr file and transferred it to a DVD. However, the DVD doesn't open with the Menu. It just starts playing the first cut and, if I want the three cut Menu, I need to choose it.

Here's where I need to get. I would like to make an identical copy of the DVD and I'd like a thumb drive copy is also identical and works the same way. i.e. it begins with the three cuts Menu.

Here's one more wrinkle. The video will need to be uploaded to a memorial website.

Create a Movie using iMovie then drag the resulting file to the thumb drive.

There's your problem!

If you have a disk copy utility, like Carbon Copy Cloner or something similar, use that to go directly from the DVD (source) to the thumb drive (destination).

It has been some time since the newer MacOS's could deal with an external DVD player, so I don't know how the copy utility will respond, but worth a try if you can.

Gave that a try but iMovie would not import the files from the original DVD. It said "No Importable Files" None of the selected files or folders can be imported. Change the selection and try again."

Interesting idea. I do have CCC (V6.1.8). I assume you mean create a backup.

But nada. CCC insisted I make the thumb drive APFS (Case Sensitive), which I did, but the resulting thumb drive would not play back on either my iMac or TV. When I view the thumb drive, it only shows two folders Video-RM and Video - TS.

It's been a long time, so I don't quite remember how I did it, but I used Disk Utility to create .iso files of some DVDs, and they open as expected in VLC.

I've never burned them to DVDs, so I don't know how that would work out.

VLC may be the solution to ryck's problem. In VLC (which is free if I recall) go to File>Convert/Stream… . Here you can save the file in a variety of video formats to any location, including a thumb drive.

VLC wasn't involved in whatever I did. It was strictly a Disk Utility project.

I went to the VLC site and first checked with their blog to see if anyone else had faced a similar challenge. One person did and the VLC advisor said "We usually tell people this is better handled by Handbrake". So, I downloaded Handbrake and was faced with a bunch of lingo that caused me to think "I'm too old a dog for new tricks", and decided to get ripping software - MacX DVD Ripper Pro - after trying their 5 minutes free version.

Long story short...... I now have three mp.4 videos that originally opened and played with QuickTime Player, but now don't. Instead, I now get a dialogue box that says: "....cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer". Is this a peculiarity with Qucktime or the walls my system has built? In either case, how do I storm the walls?

I've got no idea what happened, but when you get that pop-up, navigate to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Security, and with luck, you'll find an option to "Allow."

So, if I'm following you, you still haven't accomplished your original goal.

I'd love to be able to explain how I turned the trick with Disk Utility, but the instructions I thought I had saved somewhere are nowhere to be found. If it will help you out, though, I'll try to recreate what I did.

That did it. Thanks. There was a message that the system refused to open blah, blah, blah...with a button to Open Anyway. I had to do separately it for all three, but that's probably a lot better than a blanket permission.

I have accomplished the original goal, which was to separate the DVD into three discreet cuts but now I need to get them onto a thumb drive to send to one of the original musicians. I assume the mp.4s will open with any video player and so are ready to put on a thumb drive, to be played into computers or TVs.

Quick questions.....

1. For universality, in which format do I erase & format the thumb drive?

2. After formatting the thumb drive, is it just Drag and Drop?

I'm not sure if this is the exact procedure I followed, because I don't remember ever having MactheRipper, but it sounds promising.

I just found this link, which may provide your answer: <http://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4154#Post4154> (Note that MactheRipper is not the same app as the one you've already tried.)

Don't give up too easily on Handbrake. It is an excellent product and free. If I have a DVD I want to save to my computer, I used Mac DVD Ripper Pro (MDRP) which you have to buy. I think there's a free trial period. Then use Handbrake to make an MP4 file at a much reduced size.

Format your pen drive with Fat32, then drag'n'drop the MP4 files.

The learning curve on Handbrake is minimal. You can just use the default settings at first. The latest versions even let you upscale, if you want.

I stream the MP4 files from my computer to my telly using Plex (also free). Works great.