simplest app to cut out bits of a dvd and screenshots

Hi All

I work for a number of schools and they are always trying to enhance their

pupils' learning with visual/interactive stuff instead of boring old school

methods.

They were doing topics on World War II and the teachers wanted to cut out

video clips of famous films, eg Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbour, etc, so

that the compiled content would be OK for young eyes.

Problem is the current crop of 'stick a DVD, select a chunk, extract it and

save it as a video file' software appears to be rubbish!

The only decent one that I managed to find was a prog called MovAvi that was

simple to use and was OK for screenshots, but the left and right marker

function that allows the user to grab a snippet of video is crap. Everytime

you move the left marker it bounces back to the beginning again there is no

fluid movement with it.

Any ideas on better software for this specific task, whilst at the same time

not being a newbie's nightmare and a techie's dream?

Thanks