I am preparing an educational talk, and I want to include clips from three different Simpsons episodes. Before you ask, it is legal to use short clips of copyrighted material for educational presentations, as long as the credits are edited out, certain info is given during the talk, etc. I will comply with all laws when presenting the material.
The episodes I need are:
Bart vs. Australia (season 6), specifically the part where Bart and Lisa are discussing the Coriolis effect in the beginning.
Bart’s Comet (also season 6) where he discovers a comet which will impact Springfield.
Treehouse of Horror XI (season 12), specifically “G-G-G-Ghost Dad”, where Homer’s horoscope predicts he will die, and he chokes on broccoli.
I need these on standard US VHS format, and be of good enough quality to to viewbale projected on a screen. If you have them, I would be most appreciative to either borrow them or get copies. No downloads please! I will be happy to pay for the tape and shipping, but I need these ASAP!
If you have any or all, please email me at badastro@badastronomy.com. I have to have the talk prepared by April 10! Thanks.
Oh well. the downloadable ones tend to be compressed with a codec not understood by video editing software, I have found. If you have native AVI or a standard MPEG compression then maybe that’ll work!
I just checked online. Neither my University nor the local public library system has them. Arg! I cannot find them online to order either. The only way I have found anything is through file-sharing, but the files cannot be edited; they are compressed using an unknown codec.
Interesting how ethics start to slide as the deadline approaches. Just kidding.
I’ll do what I can, BadAs. I’ll get the episodes off “TeleToon” and edit them down into the clips you need, if possible. I’ll keep you apprised of my progress and make the clips available for download to you through MSN Messenger or FTP or something along those lines.
And I do this becuase I love nitpicking movies and you and Phil Farrand are my gods.
Heh. Well, since it *is[p/i] legal to do what I am doing, I was not overly worried about that, but I’d really rather not get them from a source that is illegal.
What is Teletoon? Can I get access to that? I appreciate any help you can give me!
TeleToon is just a Canadian cartoon cable network. You must have similar networks where you live, though on reflection, Simpsons also plays in syndication on at least two major network affiliates in my area, so I’ll check the schedule for the next few days and see if these particular episodes will be played soon.
In the meantime, I’ve just acquired the Halloween episode and the rest of this discussion should be in e-mail to respect the Stright Dope Message Board. I’m firing up Adobe Premiere (video editor) even as I write this.
I bet all the copies you have found are in RM or DIVX. It is possible to convert these to regular AVI, but it is a pain (especially the RMs), and it takes a large amount of hard drive space.
Yes, it is legal to do this, since it is for educational presentations. I looked up the law for it. There are some hoops through which I must jump, but it’s relatively painless.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to contact Fox. I have been working on this for a while, but only recently realized that I couldn’t make e-versions on my own. Anyway, it looks like Bryan may pull this through for me.