Is this a new copyright protection scheme?

[Faithful Follower]

Hi all, I have a set of VCD movie (2 discs) I want to back up. It played fine with my standalone DVD player, and all the functions worked on my WINDVD software when I played it on the computer, but when I tried to rip it to the hard drive, explorer did not show anything(no files, nothing!)on the DVD drive. As if there's no disc in the drive. But it would play when I use WINDVD. (The WinDVD player was set on the default DVD drive.)
Has anyone encountered the same problem? Is there any way to rip it? I tried VCDGear, ISOBuster, still nothing shows on the source. (Which is the DVD drive).
Thanks for any inputs.
Dave

[Tommyknocker]

Did you try to rip it while it was playing the main movie?

[Faithful Follower]

No, I haven't tried. But how?

[Tommyknocker]

Sorry, I was thinking DVD.

[Faithful Follower]

Well thanks for the reply anyway.

[agee]

I think it's a bad burn...I have a similar situation...when I was a newbie at burning stuff...I got my first cd burner and i try to burn a vcd. I have a crappy software and it manage to copy the vcd and it can be played using a dvdplayer but if i put in the computer, it gives me error....

I try many program to rip the movie files with no luck...so I gave up...

[Faithful Follower]

Hehe, agee, thanks for the info. But my problem is : window explorer could not see anything in the DVD drive!? When I insert the movie into the drive, I can play it with DVD software, but there's nothing showing when I open the window explorer and clicked on the DVD drive.
This is weird.
Dave

[mcorpse]

Sure the files aren't set to "hidden"? Heh.

[Faithful Follower]

I had all my folders set on " show all hidden files"
The Explorer would show the disc info on the left panel:
Capacity: 475MB
Used: 475MB
free: 0bytes
And there were nothing at the right panel.

[Faithful Follower]

I was able to view the second disc on the computer, but I found three extra notes on this disc, normally I don't see them on all other rips I made before.
this is one of the note:

Video CD 2.0 Toolkit Demonstration CD

This CD is a Video CD compliant with White Book Specification 2.0. It
contains MPEG encoded content which can be played on any White Book
compatible device. To enjoy the entire CD, the device should understand
White Book 2.0 data structure and navigation.

Compatible playback devices include:

CD-i players with digital video cartridges
Video CD 2.0 players
PCs with MPEG playback hardware and companion playback software.

Video CD 1.0 compliant players will only play tracks two and above and will
not play the product demonstration portion of the title, which is contained
in the first track.

The purpose of this CD is to demonstrate the authoring process used in
Video CD 2.0 Toolkit. The demonstration shows screen captures from various
stages in the process of authoring a short travel presentation. The
finished travel presentation is also included so you can see the end
product of the easy authoring process.

Also included on the CD are other examples of interactive multimedia
possible with Video CD 2.0 discs and Video CD 2.0 Toolkit. The examples are
the finished products resulting from sample projects that are included with
Video CD 2.0 Toolkit.

Video CD 2.0 Toolkit

Open up the possibilities of Video CD 2.0 with Video CD 2.0 Toolkit. You
can expand your activities by offering your customers the extended
interaction capacities of Video CD 2.0. In the graphical user interface of
Video CD 2.0 Toolkit, you can create applications ranging from linear music
videos to interactive video catalogs, all in the popular Video CD format.
The Toolkit integrates all the tools that you need to author and build
Video CD 2.0 applications like interactive training, information kiosks,
and feature films. You can produce a point of sale Video CD title with
multi-level menu structures and hotspot interaction which you can even
display on a touchscreen monitor. Video CD 2.0 Toolkit offers a set of
conversion and encoding tools surrounded by a user-friendly interface to
allow you to focus on what really matters: delivering effective interactive
multimedia communications that fully comply with the Video CD 2.0 worldwide
standard.

Video CD 2.0 Toolkit is an authoring tool for a Windows 3.1 PC that creates
Video CD titles compliant with the White Book 2.0 specification. Video CD
2.0 Toolkit offers a simple interface that allows you to specify the
content and playback structure. All of the detail work required to comply
with the White Book 2.0 is performed automatically by this tool.

Toolkit is designed for professional developers who want to control all
aspects of playback. The structure definition window allows you to easily
see all aspects of navigation at a glance. You can hide or show detailed
navigation from any structure component. In addition, you can choose to
have the structure window reflect structure beginning from any component,so you can focus on any part of the structure.

The part with the bold type, could this be the clue?

Dave

[mcorpse]

I think the part in bold refers to PBC, not the file system on the disc.

[Faithful Follower]

Thats why I posted my question in the newbie section....

[mcorpse]

Don't feel embarrassed - I don't even understand completely what they mean by that. I was just guessing.

[Faithful Follower]

Just how do they do that? I mean if the software could play the disc, it must be able to read it, then why the contents wouldn't show in the explorer? The computer cannot read the disc while the software on the computer can?

Any computer gurus out there?

[Faithful Follower]

BTW, these discs I got from the store, they are commercial releases. Not any bootleg downloads.

[sacajaweeda]

Have you tried navigating to your drive from a command prompt yet? Maybe try booting up from a Win9x boot floppy and navigating to that drive.

[zworg2]

Windows has been written to hide particular files on purpose, you cant see them in explorer, Dos or by any other method. The only way to see them is know exactly what they are called and rename them!!

Maybe if this is done intentionally with some files, it has happened accidently with the files on the VCD.

Out of interest can DOS show the files on the VCD?

Otherwise i am not sure...

Does any software copy VCD's on-the-fly? Would that work?
(sorry i work with DVD only and so not sure)

Zworg

[Faithful Follower]

sacajaweeda wrote:

"Have you tried navigating to your drive from a command prompt yet? Maybe try booting up from a Win9x boot floppy and navigating to that drive."



Sorry for the late reply, SAC, was little busy.
No. I don't know anything about dos. If you can explain how to do it, I'll give it a try. The last time I use command prompt was partitioning my new hard drive. I have a ME machine so I guess i don't need to boot into dos? I can just open the dos window with ME.
Sorry if I sound so newbie....

Dave

[Faithful Follower]

There's a correction I need to make, only my WinXP machine can play this disc with WinDVD. My ME machine could not 'see' nor play it.