Comments on: How to rip DVDs with newer copy protection?

Question: How to rip DVDs with newer copy protection?

wastelands — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:13:50 -0800

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.

By: wongcorgi

wongcorgi — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:24:14 -0800

DVDfab or AnyDVD.

By: Inspector.Gadget

Inspector.Gadget — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:38:18 -0800

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.

By: Inspector.Gadget

Inspector.Gadget — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:38:56 -0800

Woops, don't know where that extra letter came from. Sorry, wongcorgi.

By: wastelands

wastelands — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:43:48 -0800

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

By: k8t

k8t — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:43:50 -0800

AnyDVD is great.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:44:44 -0800

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.)

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:47:32 -0800

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.

By: shinynewnick

shinynewnick — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:50:26 -0800

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.

By: Inspector.Gadget

Inspector.Gadget — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:55:29 -0800

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.

By: wastelands

wastelands — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:01:17 -0800

Thanks for all the help.

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:17:45 -0800

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.

By: phrayzee

phrayzee — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:37:15 -0800

DVDFab does support building an new ISO, it's just one of the default save options.

By: jepler

jepler — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:40:54 -0800

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.

By: wastelands

wastelands — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:07:49 -0800

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.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:03:21 -0800

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.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:20:36 -0800

DVD43 is a freeware tool that does the same job as AnyDVD and, as far as I can tell, works equally well.

By: piedmont

piedmont — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:41:10 -0800

I came in to recommend DVD43 as well. Never tried AnyDVD, but DVD43 is dead-simple.

By: gemmy

gemmy — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:57:09 -0800

Thirding DVD43. Dead simple, and works with every DVD as far as I can tell.

By: roryks

roryks — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:44:46 -0800

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.