Parental controls VCD?

[websurfer907]

Actually, I dont see why its impossible to put password protection on a VCD... just make a bunch of menus where the background is something that says "Enter Password" and make it so that you have to go to the right menu option by entering like 4635 or something, a number for each menu.

Can somebody tell me why this wouldn't work?

[joe-mamma]

hey, I have sort of done this but it was with a photo album of family stuff but I also had some pictures of some parties that I didn't want accessed by anyone so I set it up so that you could only access the slideshow if you pressed 5 when my homemade intro was playing,then if you didn't it just go to a normal menu with all of the other famlily pictures. You could just have the link goto a menu with your video's instead and if they don't enter the correct password in time it will just go to a sorry password failed screen, of course if they turn the pbc off they can watch any video on the disc.

[hvr]

well... there is provision for a field ranging from 0 (unrestricted) to 3 (???), in VCDs and SVCDs for setting a kind of rating... but well, it needs to be interpreted by the playing device...

a more effective way is the mentioned one, i.e. to make a code entry page... i.e. by linking 4 or so selections which lead to the hidden sections only if the right digits were entered in the right order... but you should _not_ put those hidden sections as sequence items, since those could be accessed simply by disabling PBC interpretation... i.e. you should put hidden content into segment items...

the next problem is, that this doesn't get you much 'security' since you can always put such a (S)VCD into a computer, and copy/open any file, even segment items by effectively bypassing the PBC...

so... there is no real safe way.. unless you can ensure the VCD is not taken to a computer or a non-strict VCD player....

[vitualis]

Yep, as what hvr and joe-mamma said.

It does depend on how smart your kids are of course... as anything could potentially be copied on the PC.

Any hidden items must be a segment item (and this can include stills, audio only or video) otherwise as others have mentioned, turning of PBC will reveal all.

A way of setting a code page with VCDImager is setting the <bsn> for a selection item to be an arbitarily high number. Then, have only one selection choice which points to your desired page...

Acutally, I'd just been thinking... To the best of my knowledge, a hardware player doesn't look at the ISO filesystem at all, and reads things directly off the sectors of the VCD. So, if you could create a VCD in such a way so that the ISO filesystem doesn't point to anything useful, it could create an extra layer of protection (in so much as a simple file copy off the VCD isn't possible). The price you pay is that the VCD can't be played on the PC. Of course, you could still just do a sector-by-sector read of the VCD and then use VCDXRIP...

hvr, if you are reading this, do you know if this is possible?

Regards.

[hvr]

vitualis, I haven't mentioned this possibility on purpose, in order to keep me from having to implement it *gg*

...and because like you state, it could be easily worked around by vcdxripping...

but there's still the problem of compliantness and thus compatibility, I'm sure that some more sophisticated playing devices do in fact take a look at the ISO fs...

especially those who interprete the SCANDATA.DAT and other stuff in /EXT, including CD-i players...

[vitualis]

Thanks for the info.

Regards.

[joe-mamma]

virtualis, how do you place the video or audio for that matter into the segment section? I take it this can't be done with nero or winoncd?

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-15 14:52:24, joe-mamma wrote:
virtualis, how do you place the video or audio for that matter into the segment section? I take it this can't be done with nero or winoncd?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I don't think that it can be done with Nero of WinOnCD...

You can easily be done with VCDImager as it is blessed (or cursed depending on your perspective ) with the VCD structure being described by the XML file. Just put all your stills, video, audio only mpegs as segment-items rather than sequence-items...

Presumably there is a limit -- and hvr would be person to ask.

Note: as things in the segment folder are written on the first track of the VCD, they are subsequently burnt in MODE2 Form1 sectors. That is, 650MB of user data per 74min/650MB CD-R applies.

Regards.

[hvr]

well actually the segment items are stored in form2 sectors as well...

there is one major limitation though... there's only space for 1980 segment allocation units of 150 sectors each... calculate for yourself how long your mpeg streams may be...

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-17 05:38:26, hvr wrote:
well actually the segment items are stored in form2 sectors as well...</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Really? I didn't know that.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>there is one major limitation though... there's only space for 1980 segment allocation units of 150 sectors each... calculate for yourself how long your mpeg streams may be...
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

If my maths correct, that's 66 min of VCD compliant MPEG-1??

Regards.

[Greg12]

with all due respect, censorship is wrong.


The kids are gonna see it someday.