How do I get a DVD made with imovie by someone else imported into my imovie

Question

A friend from out of town recorded a 2 hour video of my band performing. He imported the video from his camcorder into imovie on his mac and burned it into a DVD and destroyed the original files. I have the DVD and would like to import into my mac into imovie to create some individual song video files for our website. I don't plan on doing this frequently and I need software with a simple interface that is easy to understand. I have no problem purchasing software (but I'd take freeware if it were available) to easily rip the DVD into the best format to work with in imovie. I have imovie '08 but would use another software if it was easier or better. I don't want expensive or pro editions since this is likely the only time I'll do this. any suggestions?

Answer 1

You will need third party software such as Handbrake, Ripit; these you have to purchase.
MPEG streamclip is free: http://www.squared5.com/
but you probably also need Apple's QuickTime component ($20): http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
With thanks to AppleMan, here are his instructions for doing this from a DVD to iMovie 8:
+I have found I get the best results when I use MPEG Streamclip (which is free). You also have to install the Apple QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component which costs about $20. Once you install the QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component, you don't have to interact with it, but MPEG Streamclip needs it.+
+Insert your DVD in your drive. If DVD player runs automatically, shut it down. You should see your DVD as an icon on the desktop. Open it is a finder winder. You should see a folder which has VOB files.+
+Open MPEG Streamclip and drag these VOB files into Streamclip. If it offers to fix timecode breaks, say yes. You can do the VOB files one by one if you want to deal with shorter clips. Or, you can drag all the VOB files at once and create one long clip, or use streamclip to separate them into smaller clips.+
+In Streamclip, select File/Export using Quicktime and choose Apple Intermediate Codec. You may want to check "Deinterlace" in this step. Try deinterlacing and see if you like it. It depends on your final target media as to whether this will help.+
+Now you should have MOV files in Apple Intermediate Codec which can be imported into iMovie+
Post back if this does not help. You do know that decompressing footage from a DVD causes some quality loss? But, better to have the footage with some loss than not to have it at all!