Can anyone tell me if I can copy a small section of a dvd (I believe in vob format) so that I can send a small section (eg 30 sec) or a still photo as an email attachment? This would be from a locally made dvd (eg underwater) and I don't believe it is copy protected (but not sure).

Here's the best I've come up with. Use something like VLC (win/mac/linux) or FFmpg (win/mac/linux) to convert to a format that you can edit easily. IE if you run a mac, convert to quicktime; if you run windows convert to wmv. VLC will let you specify a portion of a clip to extract.

Then use the free movie editor for your platform (iMovie or Windows movie maker) and cut the clip down to the section you want. Then you should be able to export it as a smaller clip or even a series of jpegs.

I'm guess on all this b/c I havent actually done it. Although a long time ago I used to export clips to jpg to using Adobe Premier- which gave me the thought...

If your movie is not protected by a license or CSS then it should be fairly easy.

flash seems best for animated gifs

The free choice SUPER by eRightSoft
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

OR for Professional extract and manipulation - I use Pinnacle Studio Plus

BUT - you may fall of DeCSS (copy protection) in which case you need a few tools to decrypt before you can access the content. THe most sophisticated it is ripit4me.org which encompases several tools and automates the process and includes updates to bypass the latest additiona encryption loaded on (mostly by Sony). It uses several tools and drives them and will help you find and download what you need to achieve the task.

Search videohelp.com for various video tutorials.