DVD rack player (for a Map pro with no DVD drive?)

NickVon

Well-Known Member
Clearly the simple solution is to get a USB Slim Drive (laptop external) drive to use with the Mac Pro.

That said though; this may be a weird request that doesn't exsist or is cost prohibitive.
Is there a DVD player (rack mount?) that can act as a Hardware DVD/CD player, and output video to a Projector
that..
Also carries a USB or data connection for interfacing with a computer. To rip CD's, and use software DVD playback when needed.

Or. Maybe i just need the magic link for better "presentation" style control over the DVD playback of VLC. I used to use the little Batch program that "cpf" I belive created for VLC which sets settings for VLC to auto display on 2nd video surface. Is there such a program or settings for Mac OS?

Is there a way using VLC to navigate DVD menus with out using a mouse on the 2nd screen clicking on the menus.

I also tried creating a book mark for the start of the movie but had trouble making it work.
 
There was a good thread on here a while ago about running projections for a film festival that covered similar ground.

Others may disagree, but:

I would never ever play a video from an actual DVD in front of an audience. It's asking for trouble. You need to put the plain video file on your projections computer and play it from a proper projection playback program. If you're playing original content, get the video file from the filmmaker. If you're playing a commercial film, get the file from the producer. If you don't have access to the raw video file, you probably don't have public performance rights for the material in question anyway.
 
Thanks for you thoughts Joshua.

The question stems from playing 2 dvds in the colleges archive for Nursing Training. The are designed from class room lecture presentation, but I've been looking for a more streamlined way to solve this (admittedly) once a year large lecture problem. For our Creative Arts and Video Capstones; what you suggested is what I have requested from them, which is basicly a DVD or a HD of the combined video files for all here Capstones, and show them using VLC.

Is there a "projection Playback Program" you reccomend. When we've had a PC I've used both ScreenMonkey, and VLC (with the small batch file from 'cpf')
 
As stated above, it's not usually recommended to show the actual DVD. What we do at our school when the film production kids give us DVDs of their films is to use a program called Handbrake to rip the video file off the DVD. We only use this because we have rights to show the video. Please do not rip video off copyrighted materials. Nonetheless, it works really well for us. If you were to do this, you could just borrow a computer with a disk drive from someone before the show and transfer the files from that computer to yours with a high capacity flash drive. From there just use VLC or however you were going to playback files. Good luck!
 
"Is there a "projection Playback Program" you recommend?"

Yes, QLab: www.figure53.com

Even the free version can probably do what you need. When your needs increase in sophistication, the paid upgrades are well worth it.

I would use Handbrake or similar to get the files off the DVD and put them in QLab. This also lets you play with timing to make clips either automatically follow others or wait for a manual GO, or display graphics between showing video clips, etc etc.

The QLab Google group can answer any more specific questions if you go this route.
 
I'm familiar with Qlab, but the institution has only ever rented the video license when needed. (for shows.) Other wise it would be my go to for showing video clips :). I've not used the single screen (which requires OS mirroring) in the free version of Qlab, except to test footage for a larger video cue when not connected to the extra video surfaces.

I've also used Handbrake but didn't know that it could Rip DVD, I always just used it as an easy video file converter.

Thank you folks.
 

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