Copy Protection - Reloaded

[osbornes5]

Hi folks. Been gone for awhile but still in the business. I am gonna bring up a topic that has been beat around on here before: Copy protection.

I have been working on another recital. I spend gazoodles of hours on my recitals as we tilt more to the premium end of the recital scale. I will leave it there as I don't want to bore you with those details. Suffice to say that I spend a lot of hours on each one. I sit happily editing away all the while knowing that there was undoubtedly some copying going on. I mean we always put "We're sorry but we must copy protect or work" on our order forms but we never do because of the obvious reasons. Most of what you have access to it expensive and is beatable with little know how. However, we have gotten word from some of the honest moms that there may be more going on than what we thought. As a result we are going to do SOMETHING next season.

I would be interested to know of anything new that is floating around out there. I know that the Primera Bravo disc burner has a system that is apparently pretty effective but again the machine itself is expensive not to mention the cost per disc. Anyone used this?

However, I have heard Hank talk for years about a little secret method of doing copy protection that is essentially free and is near foolproof. I have been experimenting with it and results seem very promising. I just have a few questions for Hank. I will get into Hank's method later but for now has anyone used anything that you find effective?

[osbornes5]

OK I'm gonna go ahead and throw this out there too. Here is Hank's quote from an earlier topic:

I think I'd have to implement my physical style of copy protection for that type of distribution.

Create a black video mpeg that extends to the edge of the disc (max output).  Then scribe an arc about an inch or two along the outer edge (where you can see the edge of the burn), using a sharp tool and one of those plastic end things they use when packaging bulk discs. 

Be sure you do not set that black mpeg to play!

If you follow those instructions, the discs will play in all players, but will not copy.  In order to copy, they have to lift just the good mpegs off the disc and make a new disc - beyond the capabilities of most.

I have tried this but, unfortunately, I put the scratch too far toward the middle so I am still tweaking it. I can confirm that Nero squalled like my daughter Faith when she was a baby and we called her "Tiny Whiney". It flat refused to copy. In fact it said something like "Disk failed to copy" or something.

I just have a few questions to clarify this.

1. Hank, when you say to "create a black video mpeg that extends to the edge of the disc (max output)" I assume you mean to take black video and take it out to what would nearly fill the disk. Max output just means a full disk correct? Also when you do this, do you render an burn it without the black video first so you can see where the good footage ends and then add the black video?

2. Also when you say  "Be sure you do not set that black mpeg to play" how can you keep it from playing? I mean I understand that you can just set a chapter point where the black video begins and then tell the previous chapter to go back to the menu when it ends. However, if someone just hits the "skip to next chapter" button on their remote it wold still play. I understand why you wouldn't want it to play across the scratch as this tends to lock up the player (tried it) but how do you keep it from playing at all?

3. Do I understand correctly that the scratch needs to actually be in what would be the black video or does it go outside of the video?

Thanks!

[ampsonic]

I'm not an expert, but I would guess you would build a completely separate timeline with no entrance for the black video?

[DavidPartington]

Ok - here goes.....

I USED to be an embedded systems programmer for high speed professional CD / DVD / Blu-ray duplication systems. Actually, I owned a substantial percentage of stock in one of the major players in the market but have since 'retired'. During this time I've been involved with major studios and corporates around the world. 

Now, with this in mind I have tested almost all the DVD copy protection systems out there.  The most robust system I've used is by Fortium Technologies.   This is OEM'd by lots of companies, including Primera and Rimage. Primera sell it as their own product, but in reality it's a plug-in to the duplication system.  It's sold in most cases on a pay-per-disc basis.  It's not cheap but it IS effective.  Drives in PCs are unable to read parts of the disc which make it immune to the disc copy programs, and copying the files on to a new disc won't work either.   This will stop even the most determined amateur.  Can it be hacked?  Of course, everything 'can' be hacked but some one who makes it their focus in life, but in reality they are unlikely to want to spend that sort of time on such a small scale production.

Fortium also offer tower based systems that are cheaper than the Primera and may by now offer systems that duplicator one-at-a-time on your PC drive.  If not they should!   They have also offered a solution in the past that allowed an ISO file to be encoded and produced individually.  Honestly, I don't know where all that's at now.

The question you have to ask is whether the cost per disc out weighs the amount you think you are losing due to piracy. Only you can answer that.

[osbornes5]

It's essentially the same as the Primera?

Ballpark the cost for this Fortium for me. Like a buck a disc, fifty cents, two bucks?

[DavidPartington]

Primera IS the Fortium system as a plugin to the Primera software.   I don't know the current Primera pricing - sorry.  I'm sure you could find it on the web.   I seem to recall Primera branded it as PT Protect.

[HankCastello]

I haven't done that copy protection stuff in years, but it was free and very effective.  As I recall, the black mpeg file is a totally separate mpeg file that you drop onto the disk, it is not set to be played after your video timeline.  Its size is calculated to go right (almost) to the edge of the disk.  make all your copies first, then scribe a scratch (not too deep) as described above.  The scratch only needs to be an arc of a couple inches long. 

Your disks will not be copied and once the disks are burned, the scratch process only took me about fifteen seconds per disk.

[osbornes5]

I must admit that I am a bit confused as to how to do this:

the black mpeg file is a totally separate mpeg file that you drop onto the disk, it is not set to be played after your video timeline

How do you drop an mpeg file onto the disc after you put your video on it? Do you use PP and Encore somehow or do you simply render a black file from PP then take the resulting file and use a totally seperate burn to add it to the disc in Nero (or an equivalent) after you put your real project on the disc with Encore?

[DavidPartington]

....and of course Hank's method relies on the disc not being almost full already

[osbornes5]

thats true

[HankCastello]

Sorry, could have sworn I already answered this..

I used Nero, but any disc-burning app would do.  Take the total capacity (in time) of the disc, subtract the length of your video, and create a black video mpeg file to take up nearly all the remaining space.  You need enough black video to be able to make a scratch over.  I would imagine that would have to be at least a few minutes, since the disk is widest at the edge, thinning the video file.