Extract Still Photographs from Wedding DVD Videos for Printing

There are tons of software for creating a slideshow DVD movie of your photographs but DI reader Pedro Almeida from Lisbon has a reverse requirement. He wants to extract still pictures from his Wedding video DVD for printing.

The professional wedding photographer who produced the photo DVD has the source images but he's probably charging lot of money for the service. Pedro writes:

The Wedding DVD was sold to me by a photographer and has cost me a great deal of money.

One of the DVD menu choices is to view all the wedding photos as a slideshow presentation. The photographer will take an additional charge of 3,5 euros for printing each photo.

Can we split this DVD photos presentation into separate image files like GIF or JPG. Then I will be able to print the photos myself and it would just cost me 0,5 euros each photo!!

Pedro, there are two solutions to your problem as explained here:

Solution A: - Play the DVD movie inside a media player and capture the scenes (or video frames) that you would like to print. A word of caution - normal screen capture commands like Print Screen won't work with capturing DVD videos and all you will get is a blank screen.

Read our previous guide on on how to screen capture scenes from DVD movies.

Solution B: - The second solution involves ripping the slideshow DVD into AVI or WMV files and then using a video extractor software to convert that ripped video into still photographs.

Use a DVD backup software like DVDx to convert yoaur Wedding DVD vob files into AVI format. Then download AVCutty to extract picture frames from this AVI video.

AVCutty is smart and can automatically detect the scene changes in video files. Open the extracted photographs in an software like Picasa and select the ones that you like to print. Burn them onto a CD from Picasa and just walk into your nearest photo printing shop.

And yes, all the software mentioned above are absolutely free. The quality of extracted images may not match that of original pictures but they would still be good enough.

Samson vs Blue Snowball: USB Microphones for Recording Podcasts

As the name suggests, the CO1U mic plugs directly into the USB port of your computer instead of the regular Audio-In port of the sound card so the quality of sound is much better when you compare it with the traditional stereo headset microphones.

Today, Macworld has a detailed comparison of Samson Microphone with Blue Snowball which is another popular USB mic for computer based sound recording. In brief, Samson gets 4 while Snoball get 3.5 points.

Samson C01U

Pros: Easy USB connection; fully powered by USB; very good sound quality for the price; output customizable via software.

Cons: Bulky for portable use; cable length limited by USB; doesn’t include stand; software not currently Intel-compatible; no stereo support.

Blue Snowball

Pros: Easy USB connection; fully powered by USB; dual-capsule design; good sound quality; sturdy, well-designed stand.

Cons: Bulky for portable use; cable length limited by USB; low output; omni-directional mode still somewhat directional; no software controls; no stereo support.

Update: Oreilly has some tips for using microphones to get the best recording:

1. Position the microphone as close as possible to the source, up to about three or four inches away. This helps reduce any unwanted background noise.

2. Position the microphone at a 10-40 degree angle from the sound source. This works really well, since the worst p-popping occurs from wind blasts that hit the microphone capsule straight on.

Update: The Samson C01U microphone may have some trouble with Adobe Audition 2 since that requires ASIO sound drivers. However, it should work fine with Audacity or your screencasting apps like Camtasia Studio. There's absolutely no issues if you are planning to use Windows Sound recorder.

For running Samson mics with Audition, you can download the free ASIO4ALL drivers , set Samons as the default device in the ASIO control panel and finally choose Samson in the recording device settings. This workaround may not be required in Adobe Audition 1.5 or Cool Edit pro.

Alternatively, download and install the free Samson softpre applet which is ASIO compliant. The applet lets you monitor the recording levels as well as amplify the recording in real time. [Quick Tip: Keep the green bar around -12db for best recording and never let it turn orange which is too high a volume]

You can attach multiple USB mics to your laptop computer depending upon the number of free USB ports and your audio recording software. Not all software would have support for more than one microphone.

Convert Audio Cassette Tapes to MP3 files or CD

Audio cassette tapes, once the primary audio storage medium, are now disappearing quickly from the music store shelves to be replaced with Audio CDs. If you still own a pile of audio cassettes, now is the perfect time to convert them to MP3 files or Windows Media Audio before they're gone forever.

Digitizing analog tapes essentially involves playing the tape on the taperecorder deck, capturing the audio on your computer and finally converting the .wav files to mp3 or wma formats using software like LAMP MP3 encoder or Adobe Audition. The audio cable is connected to the line-in jack on your PC's sound card.

Now there are various options to transfer your audio tapes to CD depending on your OS platform and budget. Let's look at expert opinion on the web:

Using MusicMatch - Connect the to your sound card's line-in terminal with a 1/8" mini-jack and record the contents of your tape as a WAV file. Just set MusicMatch to record the line-in channel, press play on your tape deck, and then press the record button on the MusicMatch Jukebox.

Tips for better recordings - If your tape of a favorite live concert begins with a few minutes of audience murmuring, delete it. If you’ve recorded multiple songs, split your single recording into separate files. That way, you can make each song or section a separate track on an audio CD or on your iPod. Some software can detect silence between songs and divide them for you.

Using Audacity on Mac - Audio I/O: Recording should be set for 2 channels (stereo) and both the playback and recording devices set at Built in audio controller. Audio CDs sample sound 44,100 times per second. The standard sample format (number of digits in the digital representation of each sample) is 16-bit. Audacity’s defaults are a 44 KHz sample rate, but 32-bit sample format.

Using External Audio Capture Device - Consider using an external audio-capture device such as the plug-and-play USB M-Audio Transit instead of your sound card; it will record a much cleaner signal.

Remember to set your audio software’s volume controls according to the loudness of your tape or record. Proper volume is vital to getting good sound. Set the levels too low, and your audio will be too soft and prone to noise. Set levels too high, and loud portions of the recording will sound horribly distorted.

Convert Real Audio rm/ra to mp3/wav Audio Files for Free

The most straightforward method is by using the RealPlayer itself. If the ra or rm file is linked directly on the website, just right click and choose "Save Target As" to save the real audio files to your hard drive.

Now open RealPlayer and choose Tools - CD - CD Burner to create an MP3 CD from your saved rm files. Later you can copy these MP3 files from the CD back to your hard drive or the iPod. [More on Real Player CD Burner here.]

Alternatively, you can try the RM to MP3 Converter from Jodix - it is a freeware can convert all Real Media formats (*.rm, *.ra, *.rmvb) to MP3 files. Switch from Swift Sound is also a possible solution.

The above techniques / software may not work for streaming real audio (like .ram) since they are buffered and not saved directly to the computer.

In that case, you can use Audacity to save real media as MP3 files. The method for saving the streaming real audio to MP3 is exactly same as described here. Play the file with RealPlayer and hit the record button in Audacity.

You can extend the above methods to convert rm to wmv or mov formats. First create the mp3 file and then convert it to other formats using free software like SUPER or online services like Zamzar.

Disclaimer: While it easy to convert RealAudio (.ra) and RealMedia (.rm) file formats to MP3, make sure that you are not violating any copyrights by doing so.

Extract Still Image Sequences from Video Clips with AVCutty

AVCutty is a small but useful tool that lets you do lot of interesting things with your video clips [that includes videos downloaded from Youtube in AVI format].

Here's a quick summary of the popular features in AVCutty:

» If the video is too long or boring, you can manually trim down the clip to retain just the interesting portion of the video. Or you can instruct AVCutty to split a video into multiple video clips of 'n' seconds or 'n' frames.

» AVCutty can scan any AVI video file and automatically detects the scene changes. Each scene can then be saved as a separate AVI file. For instance, if the video has scenes from the dinner table, living room and your kitchen, AVCutty can easily detect the three different areas and will save them as three separate videos. [probably works by comparing keyframes]

» AVCutty can export the entire movie or a part of the video to a series of bitmaps or picture frames which can later be printed as creating Flipbooks - a book of still images where you just flip the pages quickly and some animation appears to play.

While the donation screen can be a bit annoying, the program is still very useful especially if you are looking to cut big avi files into smaller video clips. Plus the ability to create thumbnail images from movie clips can be handy for printing contact sheets of your video clips.

There won't be any loss in video quality as AVCutty uses a loseless process and re-encoding is not done.

MP3 Cutters: Split MP3 Files Into Multiple Audio Tracks and Vice-Versa

DI Reader Ashish Gupta has an interesting question - "Do you have any easy to use freeware to split mp3 file into smaller mp3 (at user defined points)? I know Virtual Dub that does same to video files."

MP3 Splitter utilities let you easily trim the not-so-interesting portions of a podcast show, music recording or even a CD song. This reduces the file size and your friends won't get bored as they get to listen only the relevant parts of the audio clip.

While there are tons of free and commercial MP3 Trimming software, the most popular ones are MP3Splt and MP3DirectCut - both are free and keep the music quality intact as they directly in the MP3 format without having to decode/re-encode.

Command Line Utility for Splitting MP3 files

MP3Splt is a free but amazing command-line utility that can split mp3 and ogg files from a begin time to an end time. MP3Splt can even detect silent points in your audio clip and split the track accordingly.

mp3splt -t 10.00 album.mp3 [Split album.mp3 in many equal-sized parts of 10 minutes each.]

mp3splt album.mp3 10.12 14.25 -o out.mp3 [Split album.mp3 starting at 10min 12sec, ending at 14mins 25sec and save the mp3 slice in a new file called out.mp3]

Mp3Splt is available for Mac, Windows, DOS and Linux platforms. [Download]

GUI Based MP3 Splitter Software

MP3DirectCut is Windows based audio editor that also supports splitting of Audio CDs into smaller MP3 files. You can visually select and divide portions of mp3 files or use the command line.

The audio quality is preserved as the editing is done directly on the MP3 file without conversion to other formats. Can also be used to join mp3 file without re-encoding. Tiny footprint and does the job exceptionally well. [Download]

Advanced MP3 Splitting

While the above two utilities should satisfy most of your needs, if you are looking for that extra power, download Audacity with Lame MP3 encoder. It's free and has tons of advanced audio editing features with visual waveforms, sound effects and more.

Download Music from Internet Radio Stations to iPod or MP3 CD

Geoff Allen is a 69 year young Aussie, a jazz musician and loves listening to music on web radio from USA and Australia. He is looking for a simple internet radio recorder to rip save his favorite songs as MP3 audio. Geoff writes:

I want to record songs from online radio stations, label each one as I record it and put a small space in between each one (about 2 seconds) then save the songs (could be as many as 30/40 per session) in MP3 format to burn to a CD disc or the iPod MP3 player.

My greatest thrill in life other than riding my sidecar motorcycle rig is listening to good music that I can replay at my discretion and take with me wherever I go.

Disclaimer: While the method described here can be used to save streaming audio from all internet radio stations like Live365, Last.fm, AOL Radio, Pandora music or even from iTunes and Yahoo! Music Launchcast, you should cross-check their terms of service.

Geoff, assuming that you have the necessary permissions, here's a step-by-step guide to help you create an MP3 album of your favorite songs from online radio:

Step 1: Download Audacity from Sourceforge.net here. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.



Step 2: Open Audacity and choose View -> Float Mixer Toolbar. In the drop-down menu on Audacity's mixer toolbar, choose "Wave Out" or "Stereo Mix" as the input source. Open the Audacity Preferences dialog and choose Mono channel in the Audio I/O tab. Select your sound card name in Recording Device [Sigma Tel C-Major Audio in my case]

Step 3: Open the radio station of choice using the web browser or Real player or Yahoo! Messenger. Hit the play button and switch to Audacity.

Step 4: As the song of your choice is about to play, hit the keyboard shortcut - R to begin recording of the song or press the Record button on the Audacity interface. When the song end, hit the Space Bar to stop recording.



Now when your next favorite song is playing on the radio station, hit the R button again. Now Audacity will record the song in a separate track. This is helpful as you will realize in a minute. Repart the R-space bar cycle until you record all the songs to your PC or Mac.

Step 5: The last step - Choose File -> Export Multiple - this will save the individual Audacity track as separate MP3 files or WAV files. Choose the export folder and select "Split files based on Tracks". Click export.


That's it. Burn this folder as an Audio CD or transfer them your iPod or mobile phone and enjoy the web music offline.

[Make sure you download the free LAME MP3 encoder to export recording as MP3 files. Advanced users may consider Audacity effects to fine-tune their internet recordings.]

Democracy Player can Search & Download Videos from YouTube, Google Video & more

Democracy Video Player is an absolute gem of an application that has all the potential to replace Windows Media Player or Apple iTunes on your computer.


The software is absolutely free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Since it uses the popular VLC Media Player, it can play virtually all video formats from MOV to Windows Media to iPod MP4.

And here's a little known but extremely feature of Democracy Player that makes it unique among all other media players - you can use Democracy to search or download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv, Revver and many other video sharing websites.

You can also pause and resume video downloads. The videos can also be saved on del.icio.us, Digg, or Reddit right from within the Democracy interface.

Democracy will automatically watch for new videos tagged with your keyword -- when a new video is found, it'll be automatically downloaded to your computer.

How To Rip Audio from YouTube Videos

DI reader Russell Tully is trying to record and save the audio from Youtube videos but without any success. Russ writes:

There are some rare music videos on 'youtube'. I very much want just the sound from these videos, but I've tried a number of different audio capture programs and I just can't seem to get any working - problem with sound card probably.

Surely there is a program that would allow me to record and save the audio from a flash video stream and record it to my HHD. I can't seem to use my sound card for the job. Is there any other way?

Russ, you can easily save the Youtube Videos as MP3 files. Here's how:

Directly from Youtube - The FLV Online Converter at Vixy.net can take Youtube Video URLs and provide you an MP3 audio file of the YouTube video [via].

Extract Audio from FLV files - If the Youtube Video is on your hard-disk as an FLV video file, try the free FLV Extract utility that extracts video and audio from FLV files. The video is saved to .avi and the audio is saved to MP3.

The above trick can be applied to any video sharing website like MetaCafe, DailyMotion or Google Video.

YouTube Removed a Video ? Watch It With Deleted YouTube Video Viewer

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by XYZ Inc." - That's the message you see on Youtube.com when they remove a copyrighted video clip from the Youtube website.

Sometimes the video is unavailable when the owner himself removed the video but it's still showing up in the video search results. Youtube will also delete videos that are porn or NSFW.

It is however possible to watch deleted videos on Youtube - Just like Google Cache stores a copy of a webpage on Google servers, Youtube may maintain a copy of raw video on their servers even when the video has been taken off the main website.



To retrieve this "deleted video", just supply the Youtube video id (available in the video URL) to Youtube Infamousx, and this service may retrieve the deleted video from Youtube for you. [via GHacks.net]

This trick will not work for videos that have been permanently deleted from the Youtube servers.

Download Youtube Videos As iTunes MOV or MP3 Files Directly

While there are tons of tricks that let you download flash videos from Youtube or Google videos in either FLV or AVI format, Vixy.net is a new player in this game with a difference.

With Vixy, you can download Youtube videos directly as a Quicktime video or a audio-only file (MP3 format). Vixy will effectively extract the audio portion from the Youtube video for you.

When you submit an url, this service will download and convert the video format. Then you can download the converted file.

And like Keepvid, you still have the option to download in the standard Windows AVI format with the DivX codec or the MP4 format for the video iPod.

Apart from Youtube Videos, Vixy can help you covert any FLV file to AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3 format online.

Convert PowerPoint Presentations into iPod or YouTube Video

Want to publish your Powerpoint PPT slideshows on Google Video or Youtube ? Or watch them without a computer on an iPod, mobile phones or your large TV screen using a DVD Player ?

Get PPTmovie, a conversion software that turns PowerPoint slides into movie formats like MP4, MPEG or AVI. The software will also record any background music or audio narrations through the microphone and sync it with the video slideshow.


The tool costs around $50 but you can have it absolutely free today courtesy GiveAway website. [The free download link expires at 11:59 PM PST]

Download PPT Movie at GiveAway of the Day.

While PPT Movie will help you burn those PPT slideshows on a DVD disc or publish them on the video sharing websites that accept AVI, you may consider SlideShare for embedding Powerpoint slides as Flash in webpages.

How to Burn Youtube Videos to DVD

How to create a DVD movie of video downloaded from Google Video, Youtube or Myspace so that these videos can be watched on the TV screen ?

That's exactly the requirement of Sarah Chamma. She writes:

I'm trying to figure out how to burn YouTube videos on DVDs (not CDs). Could you please give it to me step by step, clear as crystal?

What systems to use, how to burn more than one video on one DVD, etc.? I don't consider myself terribly computer literate.

Before you decide to watch Youtube videos on TV via your DVD player, keep in mind that the video quality will be very low - The video resolution on sites like youtube or Google Video is 320x240 while DVD frame size is 720x480 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL.

If you are still game, here's how you can burn one or more video onto a DVD without spending a penny:

Step 1: Download the Internet Video to your hard disk in Flash Video format (extension: flv) using any of the free tools like iTube, vixy.net or keepVid.com. [Details here & here]

Step 2: Get the free DVD authoring software called DVD Flick. The software takes all your videos, encodes them and burns a DVD that can be played on any DVD player. Follow this step-by-step guide on how to burn videos using DVD Flick.

With DVD Flick, you can also add Titles, subtitles and audio tracks to your Youtube DVD project to make them more interesting. Keep your Blank DVD disc ready.

Update: Sarah was finally able to transfer Youtube videos to Youtube. She writes - "Wow! Thanks a million. I did it! I'm so proud of myself. I can't thank you enough for that."

The Easiest Way to Save Youtube Videos: Kiss The Address Bar

Kiss YouTube offers an innovative approach for downloading video clips from Youtube. No browser bookmarklets, no software to install, just remember the KISS "Keep It Sweet & Simple" principle.

While you are watching a video clip on the youtube website, just add the word "kiss" to the video URL in your browser address bar and hit enter. The video is ready to be saved on your computer in FLV format.

For instance, if the Youtube URI is something like youtube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa, you can download the clip by adding the word "kiss" in front of the youtube.com domain name. Hence the final address becomes kissyoutube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa which will have the link to save that clip.

KissYoutube.com [Thanks Gina Hughes]

Previously published Youtube Video hacks on DI: