Limit users from using DVD movies

[Neil1970Poole]

Ok everyone its fairly simple - He is going to install PCs for use in training work staff within cubicles with training material on DVD (but could also be on CD's). Now thats not the problem - He wants to be able to stop the trainees from ejecting the disks within the drive and replacing them with movie dvd's (to the effect that they are no longer training) - These Training DVD's will obviously run on a standalone player if correctly formatted to do so and will also run on the PC's that he will be installing. OK so to be CLEAR all he wants to do is stop employees from removing the training Disks in the drive and replacing them with movie DVD's or the like. If you read my earlier post there is a piece of Software that can be installed to do exactly just this and prohibits anyone who doesn't know the password ejecting the drive and therefore being able to place movie DVD's in the drive. See below:-

There is a program/software that can be purchased that will lock your CD/DVD Drive and has password protection so anyone who doesn't know the password wont be able to eject/open the drive (even disables the eject button) see the following Link for further details:-


http://www.toplang.com/cdromlock.htm

May be of help to you.


There is NO NEED to author DVD's in a specific way or even have to remove the drives.

[canadateck]

This wont work,They need the password to Play the DVD"Training DVD" and they need to be able to Eject it, to take it home.So they NEED the password.

[jimmalenko]

Ok everyone its fairly simple - He is going to install PCs for use in training work staff within cubicles with training material on DVD (but could also be on CD's). Now thats not the problem - He wants to be able to stop the trainees from ejecting the disks within the drive and replacing them with movie dvd's (to the effect that they are no longer training) - These Training DVD's will obviously run on a standalone player if correctly formatted to do so and will also run on the PC's that he will be installing. OK so to be CLEAR all he wants to do is stop employees from removing the training Disks in the drive and replacing them with movie DVD's or the like. If you read my earlier post there is a piece of Software that can be installed to do exactly just this and prohibits anyone who doesn't know the password ejecting the drive and therefore being able to place movie DVD's in the drive. See below:-

There is a program/software that can be purchased that will lock your CD/DVD Drive and has password protection so anyone who doesn't know the password wont be able to eject/open the drive (even disables the eject button) see the following Link for further details:-


http://www.toplang.com/cdromlock.htm

May be of help to you.


There is NO NEED to author DVD's in a specific way or even have to remove the drives.

Yes, but how do the employees insert the legitimate training DVDs in in the first place ?

Only having supervisors knowing the password is not good enough for mine - what if they're on the take as well ?


I would make sure that there's not any DVD playing software on the training terminals (by not installing it in the first place), and restrict any software installations to being administrator by group policy. Then create a simple autorun file with contents as follows:

[autorun]
open=MPC.EXE /play /close VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO

... and put it and the exe for Media Player Classic in the root of the disc, right next to your AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders. This autorun would then automatically open VIDEO_TS.IFO using the supplied MPC exe on disc insert, would still be playable on a settop DVD player and any commercial DVDs would not have any software to be able to play ..... unless they were using MPEG-1, in which case any PC with WMP would play them. Solution: Uninstall WMP on these training terminals



EDIT:

Here's a sample:

autoplay.zip

You could burn this to a DVDR or DVDRW and test it.

[Neil1970Poole]

I was under the impression that the Disks would be already loaded ready for the training to be undertook. As for employees taking the Disks to continue their training be it at home, well I am sure that their Training Personnel / Supervisors would have the resources to give them the material that they need along with any administration that may need to be undertaken to track who has what training material away from the campus.

I think we need to get further clarification from "skieslimit" as to what he is looking to do ultimately, then I am sure one way or another he can be pointed in the right direction, or maybe the ideas we have come up with may lead him in other directions. Eitherway we need a response from "skieslimit" before people really do start going off on a tangent and not really addressing the issue.

[skieslimit]

Wow, thanks for all the ideas guys...just to clarify, yes we will be using the DVD on the computer, but would also like it to work in the commercial DVD player. The flash program I was talking about will be installed on the computer, it's basically a menu on a lockdown pc so they can't look at porn, surf the web, etc.

We had the idea to download the videos as some have suggested (or stream them somehow), but corporate currently has a policy against downloading video over their servers...it's totally outdated but, the powers in be want it that way, so oh well. Really if we could just put something in place to discourage them a little bit that would be fine. The mini-disc idea, and the paretal lock ideas and a few others seem really plausible. I'll take them to my boss and see what he thinks.

Kirky...any suggestions as to what a good program would be to write that in? You think Vb.net would be good? If we coud do it in something like javascript or flash that would be ideal...thank again for all the input everyone.

[skieslimit]

Sorry, just read page two...these will be normal computers, and the drive will need to be operable for them to put the dvd in or out, we really can't disable it. But yes they will be putting the disk in themselves. Also, just a note, this will be going into about 240 facilities across the country, so it is pretty large scale...jimmalenko, this sounds like it would work...I downloaded the file and I think i understand. So you just write that code in like a notepad file and put it in the right directory correct? Will this only work with Media Player Classic? Thanks again!

[jimmalenko]

You'll be able to use the autorun.inf file and the MPC.EXE file that are in that zip file as-is, as your DVD Authoring process will need to create a VIDEO_TS.IFO file. The beauty of MPC is that it provides its own MPEG-2 decoding, so you don't need any other programs like PowerDVD or anything, and you don't even need to install it - the EXE file is all you need and it's all self-contained.

All methods have a caveat, and the caveat of the method I'm suggesting is that if an employee were to author and burn a movie exactly the same way, then they would be able to play them. I guess first they'd have to find out that this is how you authored them though. However no commercial DVD or "normal" DVDR would play.

Burn that sample I put up to a DVDR/RW and give it a test

[skieslimit]

I will try it as soon as i can...thanks for the excellent advice!

[skieslimit]

Jimmalenko, we tried your code and it worked great on the computers. The only thing is we could not get it to work on one of the commercial DVD players we had (it was supposed to read all formats). Any ideas what the problem would be? Also, is there a way to open the movie so that it is automatically in full screen when it starts? Thanks!

[jimmalenko]

AFAIK commercial players should only be looking for the VIDEO_TS folder (some are rumoured to look for the AUDIO_TS folder for compliance also), so I'm confident it's not the extra two files causing it. The easiest way to test is to burn just the DVD content to the same discs and see if that then plays. It may just be that the settop player you used didn't like the media you were using.

As for full screen, add /fullscreen to the command line, so that it reads:

open=MPC.EXE /fullscreen /play /close VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO

Here's all the switches you can have:

[skieslimit]

Thanks a lot...that is so helpful. Yes, I agree that is may have just been a selective player, we'll try testing it on a few more players first. Thanks again.

[kirky99]

AFAIK commercial players should only be looking for the VIDEO_TS folder (some are rumoured to look for the AUDIO_TS folder for compliance also), so I'm confident it's not the extra two files causing it. The easiest way to test is to burn just the DVD content to the same discs and see if that then plays. It may just be that the settop player you used didn't like the media you were using.

I've had issues where some set top DVD players won't play a disk that had "extras" on it. For example, I made a smallish movie, decided to use all the extra space on the DVD for original footage. The DVDs stopped worrking on the set top players as soon as I did that, even though I also had the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders on it. Could be just the few players I tested it on, but it was enough for me to stop doing that (disks are cheap now anyway).

As far as what program to write my idea in, I'm guessing you could do it in VB or some sort. Anytime I do something like that I try to make it as small as possible, so I would probably veer towards C++. If you go with .NET you're going to have to put that framework on those machines (which may not be a bad thing) but I'm from the old school days where you didn't want more bloat than you needed. A small C++ app running at boot (or better yet as a service) would be so small it woudn't cause any resource issues.

If jimmalenko's idea is working now and is acceptable though, his is easier than mine. I think the key is going to be getting an acceptable playback rate on set top players (boxes that will actually accept the out of spec DVD, and I use that loosely).

[jimmalenko]

@kirky99:

Did you have your files in the root of the DVD, or did you create a seperate folder at the root level for them ?

[Prot]

Just how much work are you willing to do to prevent this?
Only have a CD drive in the PC.
Convert the videos to WMA, or mpeg4, and put them on CD for playability on the PCs. Have the DVDs available for playing in standalone. Resolution for the those files would be high enough for viewing on full screen, but file size would allow putting it on a CD.

[skieslimit]

Well, the PCs are all pre-ordered with DVD drives in them, so we couldn't really do that. It's a good suggestion though!

[kirky99]

@kirky99:

Did you have your files in the root of the DVD, or did you create a seperate folder at the root level for them ?

I created a seperate folder, forgot what I called it, but I didn't want hundreds of JPG's in the root along with some AVI files, etc. I'm usually pretty organized. Think that might be the problem?

[jimmalenko]

@kirky99:

Did you have your files in the root of the DVD, or did you create a seperate folder at the root level for them ?

I created a seperate folder, forgot what I called it, but I didn't want hundreds of JPG's in the root along with some AVI files, etc. I'm usually pretty organized. Think that might be the problem?

No, I was actually thinking the other way - that putting files in the root might be causing the problem and that you SHOULD put them in a folder. Hmmmmm .......

[Supreme2k]

How about having a sign on each kiosk reading:
"Any employee found using this kiosk for personal use/viewing anything but authorized material (et al) will be immediately terminated"

There's absolutely no excuse for having to create that level of babysitting.

It's just like having to research the "inappropriate" sites and block them from the browsers. Your employees should either know better or not be working for you.

[John Shumate]

I have to agree with LordSmurf here...this is stupid..if you can't trust your employees with this, then fire them bottom line. There are ways to do this via programming since I do these types of things..but its a waste of time and money for your company..unless you're doing an experiment to see if 5 year olds can work like mature adults.

[skieslimit]

Ok, jimmalenko, I think we are going to go with your idea. It works great so far, the only thing is that it doesn't seem to open on every DVD player (commercial players), although I'm sure this is probably normal anyway. Thanks for all the help. It is GREATLY appreciated!