Church Tech Dump

Over the past eight years, I’ve been asked dozens of times to rip a DVD and re-edit parts of it. I’ve made montages of Braveheart, edited the dirty bits out of Fight Club, and taken the swearing out of The Matrix. The request I get most often, however, is to simply reorder some scenes on a time line and burn to a DVD for easy playback of a few clips.

That’s illegal in a gray area of legality that I don’t wish to traverse. All of it. And I don’t do that stuff anymore.

So what’s a copyright law abiding pastor to do? Well, I can’t help you with montages of 300 or editing the cuss out of Pulp Fiction. But if all you want is to show clips from a movie in a specific order, ProPresenter has your back.

You might already know that ProPresenter can play back a DVD from within the app. But did you know that you can create a playlist of clips from a DVD for playback later? It’s easy! After setting a few in and out points you can construct a list of clips from the DVD and play them back at your convenience. For more detailed instructions and some screen shots, visit this ProPresenter Help document.

NOTE: Even though playing back DVD clips in this manner does not break copyright law, you still need a church video license from CVLI to display clips from many movies. Also, I’m not a lawyer.