Odd DVD copy problem, on multiple software

[szakara]

Hello, all VH.com people!

As specified in the topic, I have encountered an odd DVD copying problem, which feels hard to describe in less than a hundred letters.

I have a DVD-format movie, copied on my HDD from the DVD-disc, in VIDEO_TS and .VOB format. I have tried to use several different DVD shrinking, decrypting etc. software, trial, shareware and free software (including several versions of DVDfab, DVD Shrink etc.) to decrypt the movie and cut it down to a size that fits a DVD5 DVD+R disc. Eg. from 7GB to 4,6GB. Which would easily be accomplished by cutting away the extras and multiple audio tracks.


What intrigues me, is that for some reason or another, VLC Media Player seems to be able to play the DVD folder, that includes the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders, without a problem — even though it's just a Windows 7 Explorer copy-and-paste job — while no other software seems to be able to do that. Not MPC-HC/Media Player Classic, at least not without ffdshow, nor the aforementioned ripper/decrypter/shrinker software.

When run, the aforementioned software seems to process and finish successfully, but can't seem to show a preview of the video, nor produce a watchable result file. Regardless of whether I enable or disable the CSS removal systems, PathPlayers and so on.


The thing I'm wondering is, how does VLC handle the folders/files so differently from the other software mentioned? Why can it play the files while these other powerful apps can't seem to do squat? And could it somehow be helped?


I spent about whole last night trying to google solutions or tips as to how this could be fixed, but no-one seemed to be reporting quite similar issues.


Oh yes, the film is a Nordic release of a 2010 film published by DreamWorks/Paramount. And I'm indeed running Win7.

Thank you for any replies.

[Keyser]

If you used copy-paste to copy from DVD to hard drive you now have a CSS encrypted VIDEO_TS folder on your HDD. So, it's only natural that most software you use to open that folder does not work. On the contrary, VLC media player incorporates libdvdcss, a library that enables CSS decryption directly on the VOB files.

The CSS removal option on programs like DVDFab and so on, only work on the original DVD disk and not on VIDEO_TS folders on your hard disk. This happens this way because such programs need the encryption key stored on the DVD.

[szakara]

Thank you very much, Keyser, for your quick and evidently accurate answer. Good to know!

- S.