How to rip DVDs with newer copy protection?

December 15, 2008 4:13 PM

How do I work around the newer DVD copy protection?

Recently I tried to backup a DVD of Hancock to a hard drive via DVD Shrink. It failed with a CRC error at 8% into the disc (almost exactly where the movie starts). Handbrake also choked and showed encoding times that kept doubling indefinitely. The movie played from the actual disc mostly okay in VLC with a only slight hiccup at that beginning of movie mark. I saw at least one other person online who had trouble ripping this particular DVD.

I have heard some newer DVDs have better copy protection on them. I'm not totally sure this was the case with Hancock; maybe it was a bad disc. But in general, is there a good way to work around these schemes?

I'm on Win XP.

posted by wastelands to computers & internet (19 comments total)

DVDfab or AnyDVD.
posted by wongcorgi at 4:24 PM on December 15, 2008

wrongcorgi has it. Here's the deal though: Both are trialware, except for DVDFab's decryption and copying ONLY functions. To get where you're used to, rip with either (try DVDFab HD Decrypter first, as you might as well stick with the functions that don't expire if possible) and then point DVD Shrink (for transcoding) or DVD Decrypter (for re-mastering, selecting only certain PGCs, splitting, etc.) to the newly ripped VIDEO_TS folder and point their output to another folder.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:38 PM on December 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Woops, don't know where that extra letter came from. Sorry, wongcorgi.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:38 PM on December 15, 2008

Thanks. I've been using DVD Shrink to rip to an uncompressed .ISO file. Do those programs support that?
posted by wastelands at 4:43 PM on December 15, 2008

AnyDVD is great.
posted by k8t at 4:43 PM on December 15, 2008

I just purchased AnyDVD. It works really well, at least so far.

If you're considering getting it, you should get it before the end of the year. People who buy now get free upgrades for life. After the first of the year, it'll cost a fee every year for upgrades.

(While I was at it I also purchased the HD/BluRay version, but I haven't been able to test that yet because I don't have a BluRay drive.)
posted by Class Goat at 4:44 PM on December 15, 2008

Just thought I'd mention: I'm using AnyDVD with Vista.

A couple of years ago there was an uproar on SlashDot, people who claimed that Microsoft was selling out to the MPAA and was going to put end-to-end DRM in Vista.

But AnyDVD works just fine with Vista, and it has unlocked every DVD I've tried so far.
posted by Class Goat at 4:47 PM on December 15, 2008

Here's a link to the free DVDfab program. It only lets you do the basics as Inspector.Gadget stated, and it will also force you to download anytime there is an update. But it works on pretty much any movie that chokes DVDShrink.
posted by shinynewnick at 4:50 PM on December 15, 2008

Thanks. I've been using DVD Shrink to rip to an uncompressed .ISO file. Do those programs support that?

I don't believe DVDFab does, but what you can do is point DVDShrink to the VIDEO_TS folder created by DVDFab and create an ISO that way or just burn the VIDEO_TS folder to a DVD-R.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:55 PM on December 15, 2008

Thanks for all the help.
posted by wastelands at 5:01 PM on December 15, 2008

I used to use "SmartRipper" but some of the DVDs I've bought recently kill it. It locks up with a "bad block" near the beginning of the first large VOB file.

AnyDVD isn't confused by whatever it is they did. It rips them just fine.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:17 PM on December 15, 2008

DVDFab does support building an new ISO, it's just one of the default save options.
posted by phrayzee at 5:37 PM on December 15, 2008

Anybody have links to post-CSS DRM on DVDs? I found a little information about ARccOS, but nothing newer than that. In the afterdawn forums, which kept popping up in my searches, there's a lot of talk about this or that windows program to use to rip a specific disk, but not a lot of technical information to be found.
posted by jepler at 5:40 PM on December 15, 2008

jepler, I don't, but I think one of their tricks is to write bad blocks to the DVD so that rippers will choke while trying to get an exact copy, whereas DVD players will skip over small defects.
posted by wastelands at 6:07 PM on December 15, 2008

For the record: RipIt4Me, FixTVS, DVDDecrypter, ImgBurn (in that order). RipIt4Me runs all the rest semi-automatically, except that it wants to use Nero instead of ImgBurn. All are free; all work great for everything I've seen.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:03 PM on December 15, 2008

DVD43 is a freeware tool that does the same job as AnyDVD and, as far as I can tell, works equally well.
posted by flabdablet at 7:20 PM on December 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I came in to recommend DVD43 as well. Never tried AnyDVD, but DVD43 is dead-simple.
posted by piedmont at 7:41 PM on December 15, 2008

Thirding DVD43. Dead simple, and works with every DVD as far as I can tell.
posted by gemmy at 8:57 PM on December 15, 2008

then point...DVD Decrypter (for re-mastering, selecting only certain PGCs, splitting, etc.) to the newly ripped VIDEO_TS folder and point their output to another folder

Inspector.Gadget (or anyone), how do you point DVD Decrypter to the newly ripped VIDEO_TS folder? I can't seem to get it to point anywhere except the DVD drive.
posted by roryks at 2:44 PM on December 16, 2008