New DVD copy protection???

[Gurm]

That page has no description of the actual protection other than to call it "dynamic" and "digital". Sony's protection, arccos, is an IDCT-mangler. This is illustrated by the name, which is the abbreviation for "arc cosine". IDCT stands for "Inverse Discrete (not DiscrEEt) Cosine Transform". What Sony's protection does has nothing to do with the physical structure of the disc, and everything to do with screwing up the IDCT data in some way that is tolerated by hardware/software players but not by transcoders/re-encoders.

Sony's protection will be difficult to break, because different people want to access the data differently.

In "transcoding" (DVD Shrink, et al) the IDCT data is acted upon directly. In this case, one would need to identify the mangled IDCT data and unmangle it BEFORE attempting to run Shrink.

Virtually every product will need to be reworked to be aware of it... but products like AnyDVD or DVD Decrypter could probably be made aware of it and have code added. Of course, the person who cracks this code will likely be sued from here to kingdom-come by Sony, much like the poor kid who wrote DeCSS was.

In "re-encoding" (CCE, TMPGEnc, etc.), the IDCT data could prove problematic as well.

But I do think that the place to deal with this is at the "ripping" phase.

What Petar is experiencing, however, is a PHYSICAL mangling of the discs, most likely intentional. It has NOTHING to do with Sony's protection, and once Olli and the DVD Decrypter guys have worked out exactly what's going on, it'll be relatively easy to circumvent - just ignore the bad sectors (intelligent bad sector skip) and fill them in with 0's. Unlike similar protections on the PC, there is no "program" checking to make sure that the errors are still there - they have been inserted solely to trip up "rippers".

Are you following this now?

- Gurm

[petar]

Wow, this Sony protection does seem serious. But from what I've read on their web site (though it's not much; where did you find all this info Gurm?) it is fully compatible with the current players.

Does that mean compatible with the software players as well? If so, WinDVD, PowerDVD and alike should be able to play it. If so, the current rippers (DVD Decrypter et al) should do too because they only extract the data from the disc by breaking the CSS and they couldn't care less what's in the data. And the Sony protection seems to be at the data level or more specifically at the video level, in a way. Kind of like Macrovision for analog, don't you think?

So, if one is able to rip it and providing DL discs become reality (in terms of compatibility and reliability), copying should still be possible as long as you don't change the video stream.

But according to Sony (quote from the website):
Prevention of unauthorized 1:1 copies on PC
So the protection must be doing something else too, if they claim this. Gurm or anyone knows?

[Jah_Rankin]

Get rid of XP and your problems will go away

I'm trying to rip the House of Sand and Fog but with no luck.

DVD Decrypter 3.2.2.0 reports "InterfaceThread Runtime Exception!" "Message = EAccessViolation" while checking for RCE protection, right after I open the disc.

SmartRipper 2.4.1 reads the disc up until "Authentication successful" and then reports "Access violation at address 0041FAEA in module 'SmartRipper.exe'. Read of address 014A8001". Can't read the disc anymore.

DVD Shrink (tried 2.3 and 3.0 Beta 5) locks right after the Analysis phase starts (about the same time the movie starts; analysis of the menus is fine). If I cancel the analysis and backup anyway, it stops at around 4% with the message "CDvdCSS::Read failed!" "The reason is: Data error (cyclic redundancy check)".

I tried two different drives and both report the same things.
The DVD plays fine on a standalone and with WinDVD.

Win Explorer can read the VIDEO_TS directory OK but it can't copy the files to HD. I know the files would be useless because of CSS but the strange thing is it can't copy them at all; it reports error - "Cannot replace or create VTS_<whatever>: File system error (-2147351799)" when I drag a VOB file to my desktop.

Disc is region 2, the edition for videoclubs (not pirating, I own the videoclub). In fact, the disc has been rented quite a few times and no customer reported a problem viewing it.

A friend of mine told me he couldn't rip the same movie (different disc) and had the same symptoms with DVD Shrink (he didn't try other tools). So it's not a faulty disc I've got. What's going on? Did they come up with some new type of protection?

[petar]

Get rid of XP and your problems will go away

What XP has to do with it? Other OSs can magically read bad sectors?

[Gurm]

Petar,

Rankin is being an ass. I'm sure he's a Win98 zealot - a small minority who think that a filesize-limited OS with forced hardware interrupts and a badly broken kernel is somehow SUPERIOR to a halfway decent OS such as WinXP or (heaven help us) Linux.

As for how I found out about the Sony protection, there was an article that described it... a press release or some such.

And as for how they would prevent 1:1 DL copies, I have no idea what ELSE besides IDCT mangling their protection employs.

- Gurm

Edit: I got my information from the CDFreaks post as well as one other link which I can't find at the moment. CDFreaks points out that Sony has NOT disclosed the exact nature of the protection, however THEY surmise that it is IDCT mangling. I will suspend judgement until I see the finished product.

[Jah_Rankin]

The apple doesn't fall to far from the tree, your mom called me the same thing after I stiffed her for a 10 $ blowjob

[quote=" Rankin is being an ass.

[jimmalenko]

Sorry to dredge up an old post, but I didn't get notified that this had been modded.

Just to clarify:

The best copy protection is the user, isn't it ?

jimmalenko,
I will not give you the pleasure to respond to your comments so that you can turn this topic into a flame war. Those users interested in this topic would have read it from the beginning and will probably disregard your comments anyway.

I had no intention of turning this into a flame war. I was simply stating that percentage wise, the user is the best form of copy protection. You only have to scour these forums to see that the user is generally doing something wrong and coan't copy their DVD. I am not singling out or classifying petar as this, just making a generalisation.

[petar]

jimmalenko,
I believe everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion, and in this forum, providing you comply with the rules, you are free to express it. But this opinion expressed in a wrong place can offend people. In this particular case, the way I saw it is that, according to you, I don't know what I'm doing.

I have seen these kind of comments from you in other topics turn into name-calling (without entering into arguments whether it was your fault or not) hence I said that I won't respond to you.

Now, I'm not trying to hold a lecture on good behavior here, but don't you think that you should have a bit more consideration when posting comments like that? People do take these comments personally, even if that was not your intention, when posted in a topic they've started.

But, if with your last post you were trying to say that this was not your intention, then it's cool.

[MackemX]

lol , at some debates in this thread (I'm not saying anything else )
but something does seem to be happening somewhere

it's stupid as I've known a few ways to trip up certain 1:1 tools for a while now (mainly DVDShrink & Instantcopy) but I don't think the companies even realise it (Universal/Sony etc feel free to contact me for $$ in return )

I ripped with DVD Decrypter 3.2.3.0 (earlier versions won't do) all files except the last two VTSs (they are dummy VTSs which have no use and are full of errors) and the VTS_01_1.VOB file. The latter is the one where the ring of bad sectors is (at least in my case, in all three movies). Don't try to rip it with DVD Decrypter, you won't get anywhere - there are thousands of bad sectors.

do you just replace the last 2 dummy VTS?
what is actually in the VTS_01_1.VOB?

p.s. thanks for filemerger note

[Roderz]

This thread was getting along quite well before this dipshit (who obviously hasn’t read this thread from the start – because his finger got tired following all that text) came along.

Jah_Rankin wrote.

Get rid of XP and your problems will go away

Then added more of his intellectual musings here.

The apple doesn't fall to far from the tree, your mom called me the same thing after I stiffed her for a 10 $ blowjob

[Gurm]

I wasn't going to stoop to his level. He is, however, as I previously stated, an unmitigated ass.

Ridding oneself of Windows XP will not magically cause thousands of bad sectors to disappear from a physically marred ring around a DVD.

- Gurm

[jimmalenko]

I have seen these kind of comments from you in other topics turn into name-calling (without entering into arguments whether it was your fault or not) hence I said that I won't respond to you.

...

But, if with your last post you were trying to say that this was not your intention, then it's cool.

cool.

I probably should have preceeded my statement with "In a general sense...".

[Jah_Rankin]

If life ware a tape recorder I would put u on eject.

This thread was getting along quite well before this dipshit (who obviously hasn’t read this thread from the start – because his finger got tired following all that text) came along.

Jah_Rankin wrote.

Get rid of XP and your problems will go away

Then added more of his intellectual musings here.

The apple doesn't fall to far from the tree, your mom called me the same thing after I stiffed her for a 10 $ blowjob

[petar]

do you just replace the last 2 dummy VTS?

No, the last two VTSs don't seem to be a part of the DVD actually and can be left out completely. It looks like they've been added in order to introduce more problems when ripping the disc. The IFO files are corrupt and there are errors in the VOBs (DVD Decrypter reports that the headers are missing). The BUP files are OK, so I looked into them and they are full of errors (incorrect commands calling inexistant PGCs in the VMG, illegal playback time, illegal P-UOPs instructions, all 8 audio and 32 subpicture streams have their status enabled in one of the titles and none in another...)
None is referenced in the VMG and they never get accessed.

what is actually in the VTS_01_1.VOB?

There are three cells (VOB ID 1 - Cell ID 1, VOB ID 2 - Cell ID 1 and VOB ID 3 - Cell ID 1) with the legal warnings. Then it's the cell with all the bad sectors - VOB ID 4 and Cell ID 1 and then the movie starts with VOB ID 5 Cell ID 1, then Cell ID 2 and so on.

[Roderz]

Gosh that Jah_Rankin is sooo funny don't ya think, I just can't stop laughing.

[Gurm]

Wow, Jah_Rankin. You've added so much to this thread.

Have the rest of your 98 posts been this helpful and useful?

- Gurm

[ruanova]

Hi,

Look here:

http://www.dvdrspain.com/displayarticle813.html?POSTNUKESID=50cb664657f346855a8752c89a146782

[petar]

Thanks ruanova.

For the non-spanish speakers, the web site recommends another method for ripping these discs.

Use AnyDVD or DVDIdle for CSS. Then DVD2ONE to make a movie only copy and unselect all cells with playtime of zero. I don't have DVD2ONE so I can't try it but in theory it should work. The only problem is that it's a movie-only backup.

[MackemX]

@petar, thanks for the info

as Gurm mentioned previously they are using the dummy VTS to trip up programs that check the validity of DVD structure in each VTS or use them when processing

as for the corrupt cells I suppose there would be a few ways you could fix it manually. It may take a while manually seeing as it's at the start of a 1GB chunk . I'm sure rippers etc will soon be updated to replace the corrupt data with a blank cell or something

I suppose using DVDDecrypter in Cell mode would be another way to bypass it as you can replace the dodgy ones with blanks afterwards and rebuild it that way

[jdeh]

Here's my 2 cents worth. I have copied "a few" movies. Most copy the first time, some need a bath using dish detergent and hot water or windex or whatever and they get past the read errors. Sometimes I have to use Decrypter & DVD2One instead of DVDShrink which is much faster. Lately, Shrink almost never works and I cannot figure that out since I used to use it successfully almost exclusively except when I got a stubborn disc.

However, some, no matter how many times you clean them up and whatever software you use, will NOT copy. My guess on these is that they have been in circulation so long that the surface has been abused. Then it's time to get a clean copy, perhaps from a friend. I have done this several times and been able to copy a different disc. would appreciate, however, any suggestions on why my DVDShrink is not able to copy anymore without encountering errors, almost every time.


Thanks, BoBo Bolinski

[ViRaL1]

That almost sounds like piracy. Think of this like the military.

Don't ask, don't tell.

[jdeh]

good advice viral1....almost but not really...not for resale/distribution.

am reinstalling DVDShrink to see if that fixes things

[jdeh]

ViRaL1>>>have edited and resubmitted my post...don't ask, don't tell...thanks, Bo Bo

[jimmalenko]

good advice viral1....almost but not really...not for resale/distribution.

Maybe not piracy but definitely warez.

[jdeh]

yeah, thanks for pointing that out and slap me 2 times for an awareness check!

PS: just got another copy protection error using DVDShrink recently reinstalled.

[jdeh]

jimmalenko>>nice guides, thanks! Looks like I'm doing and setting everything correctly but still getting copy prorection errors, etc. Just tried to backup my store bought copy of MATRIX and failed.

[MeDiCo_BrUjO]

Have you tried an utility like dvdinfopro to search for errors on the dvd?

[jabloomf1230]

This is a most interesting thread. I don't have the depth of knowledge of many of the posters on this thread, but I'd like to add my personal experience, which is similar to petar's. About two months ago, I went to a Big Box store and bought a copy of Lost in Translation. It played fine on my PC's LiteOn DVD drive, but when I went to make a backup with DVDDecrypter, I experienced the same problem as petar did (massive numbers of read errors in one of the VOBs, no matter what I did. BTW the same problem occurred with AnyDVD and DVDShrink also). I took the DVD back and exchanged it for the same title and what do you know? Same problem in the same VOB. I returned it again, but unfortunately, they had no more copies of LIT, so I got a refund. Not to be defeated, I went to a different store and bought LIT. This disk ripped with no problem.

Fast Forward to yesterday. I just bought a 3 DVD set of a BBC science title, which is brand new. Each of the 3 disks has the same problem on the exact same VOB. Now the punch line. All 3 disks play fine of my PC, but I tried them on 3 different laptops and none of the disks will play properly. They load and then the green LED just does that good old fast blink that usually means read errors. If you let the laptop sit there long enough, the DVD will then play. DVDInfo shows a whole bunch of bad sectors.

I once had a teacher who had a motto for solving problems: "Don't call a horse a zebra." In other words, simple explanations are more likely to be true than exotic, elaborate theories. In the case of what's being presented in this thread, my guess is that these are just poorly manufactured DVDs. I doubt that it's some new form of copy protection, since there is a good chance that it would prevent the disks from being readable on a significant number of DVD drives. People would start returning them to the stores for a new copy or refunds until they got one that worked.

Wait what am I saying? Hmmm.

[gitreel]

Get rid of XP and your problems will go away.

You are a moron. XP has nothing to do with ripping a dvd.

I have ripped many a dvd in my backup days, and I use XP.

[Gurm]

Get rid of XP and your problems will go away.

You are a moron. XP has nothing to do with ripping a dvd.

I have ripped many a dvd in my backup days, and I use XP.

Yes yes, we've already covered this. He's anencephalic.