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Does Ripping BD Movies Restore Zoom Control?

tyner

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I surely will be trying this when I soon upgrade from a Windows XP desktop to a Xeon Rocket Lake cpu and ECC memory supporting motherboard. Meanwhile, has anyone tried this?

As those know who’ve enjoyed using the zoom feature on their DVD players, thanks to the ubiquitous BD-J authoring platform, zoom capability of most Blu-Ray movie discs is inaccessible by all BD players licensed to play them. There are exceptions like Twilight Time’s “Whirlpool” (1949), Warner’s “Network” (1975), “Don Juan DeMarco (1995) and Arrow’s “Spirits of the Dead” (1968). But Universal’s “Psycho” (1959) and Criterion Collection’s “All That Heaven Allows” (1955), “Gilda” (1946), and “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945) have zoom control disabled. And what’s worse about the last two titles is that as they were filmed in 1.37:1, rather than the pre-1952 1.33:1 aspect ratio standard, they have thick vertical and horizontal black bars around the entire frame. Zooming would allow for overshooting the bars, albeit with slight image cropping but without any stretching.

Unfortunately, the designers of most of the best performing standalone BD players from Sony and Panasonic (e.g. the otherwise superb Panasonic 9000) carelessly omitted all zoom features. All of the Oppo BD players only have “partial” zoom, where-unlike my trusty JVC XV-NA70BK DVD player-the zoomed image cannot be moved and centered on the screen. But my Pioneer LX500 BD player and most of the now discontinued Arcam BD players can do this. As for software BD players, I believe only JRiver has full zoom control.

Therefore, for those of you who’ve ripped many movie titles on Blu-Ray from the 50’s thru the 90’s, and burned them onto BD-R or BD-RE, are you able to zoom in on ALL of them with your Oppo (or Arcam) players?
 
General response here, not specific to your question, or maybe it is.
Except for Cinavia which is a totally different issue, most functionality is restored to ripped copies. Most common being the 'user prohibit' bits, most well known prohibit bit being the inability to fast-forward the FBI Warning.
If all else fails, ripping to MKV opens up a whole new avenue of tools available to possibly do what it is you're trying to do. Could be as simple as opening MKVToolNix and setting the 'crop' and displayheight and displaywidth parameters.
 
General response here, not specific to your question, or maybe it is. Except for Cinavia which is a totally different issue, most functionality is restored to ripped copies. Most common being the 'user prohibit' bits, most well known prohibit bit being the inability to fast-forward the FBI Warning. If all else fails, ripping to MKV opens up a whole new avenue of tools available to possibly do what it is you're trying to do. Could be as simple as opening MKVToolNix and setting the 'crop' and displayheight and displaywidth parameters.
Thanks for replying. Again, I won't be attempting any BD ripping until months after my new desktop happens, but I hope AnyDVD HD can bust Cinavia, especially if it's, in fact, the layer of protection that (deliberately?) prohibits zoom control. Ripping to MKV would be fine if it's fully compatible with my Oppo and especially Pioneer LX500, the latter having X + Y zoomed image centering-and if it doesn't make me have to re-create the BD movie menu. With BD ripping I'll usually prefer to keep things simple.
 
ANYDVD does not bust Cinavia. It does patch PowerDVD to not enforce it. If you were to process a ripped copy on a licensed set top player they would enforce Cinavia. Fortunately, user created media is not enforced on many players.
 
Wrong, yes it does. But only for blu-rays and in combination with CloneBD and at a cost to the background audio quality

Would you elaborate the last part? Does it downgrade the audio somehow? Last I knew, if you created a disc from an ANYDVD rip, the Cinavia would take effect and stop the audio.
There was a 'patch' option to tell Power DVD to not enforce it and this 'patch' needs to get updated every time Power DVD gets updated.
 
Would you elaborate the last part? Does it downgrade the audio somehow? Last I knew, if you created a disc from an ANYDVD rip, the Cinavia would take effect and stop the audio.
There was a 'patch' option to tell Power DVD to not enforce it and this 'patch' needs to get updated every time Power DVD gets updated.
This really is off topic. There are probably a gazillion threads about this already. Yes, audio is degraded.
 
There was a 'patch' option to tell Power DVD to not enforce it and this 'patch' needs to get updated every time Power DVD gets updated.
Is that so? Take a peek at the changelog, when I needed to update AnyDVD because of Cinavia...
Once a year, because Cyberlink decides to collect money for a "new" (cough) PowerDVD version.
End of off topic...
 
Thanks for replying. Again, I won't be attempting any BD ripping until months after my new desktop happens, but I hope AnyDVD HD can bust Cinavia, especially if it's, in fact, the layer of protection that (deliberately?) prohibits zoom control. Ripping to MKV would be fine if it's fully compatible with my Oppo and especially Pioneer LX500, the latter having X + Y zoomed image centering-and if it doesn't make me have to re-create the BD movie menu. With BD ripping I'll usually prefer to keep things simple.
Use AnyDVD & CloneBD. Do not keep the original menus, as Java code might interfere with player features. Zooming etc. will work.
You might give AnyDVD speedmenus a try, too.
 
Use AnyDVD & CloneBD. Do not keep the original menus, as Java code might interfere with player features. Zooming etc. will work. You might give AnyDVD speedmenus a try, too.
Actually, I’m badly shocked to learn that a BD’s typical 24 bit DTS MA audio track would be degraded. A huge part of many movies enjoyable for me is audio quality, as many of my favorite movies have wonderful music. So you’re saying that no matter how I use AnyDVD HD, what kind of file I save the ripped BD movie to and/or if I use Clone DVD to burn the rip to a BD-R, that the audio will always be degraded?

But instead of PowerDVD, what if simply play the decrypted BD on JRiver? Indeed, last year I reviewed the features of every leading software movie player and found that JRiver’s feature set beats them all. It is the only player I could find that allows complete zoom control of a decrypted disc-even allowing you to X + Y center any part of the zoomed image on the screen, just like my JVC and Pioneer players can do with DVDs and Twilight Time BDs. And all you need do is run AnyDVD HD in the background; no need to do any actual ripping and burning!!

I have no affiliation with JRiver, but it’s no secret that AnyDVD HD is among those BD decrypters JRiver recommends. https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Blu-ray

JRiver also works with most teachable universal remotes https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Remote_Control http://www.usbuirt.com/overview.htm

And speaking of getting the most out of BD movie sound quality, JRiver was the player of choice for use with this multichannel DAC. https://www.exasound.com/Blog/tabid...perfect-ASIO-Playback-with-exaSound-DACs.aspx

And JRiver is shown here to interface seamlessly with DIRAC room correction. https://www.exasound.com/Blog/tabid...ard-Hi-Res-Digital-Audio-Discovery-Group.aspx

All of this will be the basis of my 5.1 system, when I will play nearly all of my BDs and DVDs via the BD drive in my desktop pc, decrypted by AnyDVD HD, with JRiver then feeding video via HDMI to my screen and decoded DTS MA via USB to a DAC like Exasound’s new e68, in a DIRAC corrected room.

For now, however, I only wanted to know if using AnyDVD HD that I could reclaim zoom control without penalty. But it’s not worth the trouble if sonic penalties are imposed.
 
@tyner, there's only one time when AnyDVD will touch audio, and that's when the Cinavia option is deliberately turned on. That's found under AnyDVD "Program Settings->Remove Cinavia watermark from CloneBD audio stream during copy." So it takes AnyDVD and CloneBD collaborating together to cause a change to the audio.

You would only turn that on for a disc that contains Cinavia audio watermarking, if you are planning to play back an ISO rip burned to a disc and then played on a Cinavia-compliant playback device. There are quite a few playback devices out there that don't recognize Cinavia at all, and so will play re-authored content from a disc even if it contains a Cinavia-protected soundtrack, and other devices that don't implement Cinavia detection when playing back media files instead of physical discs.

Without that option turned on, AnyDVD does not touch the audio.

--michael
 
Actually, I’m badly shocked to learn that a BD’s typical 24 bit DTS MA audio track would be degraded. A huge part of many movies enjoyable for me is audio quality, as many of my favorite movies have wonderful music. So you’re saying that no matter how I use AnyDVD HD, what kind of file I save the ripped BD movie to and/or if I use Clone DVD to burn the rip to a BD-R, that the audio will always be degraded?
No, of course not. The "Cinavia" stuff has nothing to do with your original quesion (zoom control) and for no reason we got sidetracked.
 
No, of course not. The "Cinavia" stuff has nothing to do with your original quesion (zoom control) and for no reason we got sidetracked.
Sorry about that; hardly intentional. Krawk mentioned Cinavia protection, which I was aware of, but which concerned me (as it would anyone); so I inquired further. That's all folks.
 
@tyner, there's only one time when AnyDVD will touch audio, and that's when the ................Without that option turned on, AnyDVD does not touch the audio. --michael
VERY informative reply. Thank you.
 
@tyner, there's only one time when AnyDVD will touch audio, and that's when the Cinavia option is deliberately turned on. That's found under AnyDVD "Program Settings->Remove Cinavia watermark from CloneBD audio stream during copy." So it takes AnyDVD and CloneBD collaborating together to cause a change to the audio.

You would only turn that on for a disc that contains Cinavia audio watermarking, if you are planning to play back an ISO rip burned to a disc and then played on a Cinavia-compliant playback device. There are quite a few playback devices out there that don't recognize Cinavia at all, and so will play re-authored content from a disc even if it contains a Cinavia-protected soundtrack, and other devices that don't implement Cinavia detection when playing back media files instead of physical discs.

Without that option turned on, AnyDVD does not touch the audio.

--michael
Still a little confused, though partially by my own ignorance. My plan was burn an ISO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_image of the AnyDVD HS decrypted BD movie via Clone BD (minus non-english tracks and disabling region coding and enabling zoom and DTS MA tracks) to a BD-RE.

But unless the latest firmware enables it https://www.pioneerhomeusa.com/wp-c.../Firmware_Update_for_UDP-LX500_05_27_2021.pdf ,

this LX500 owner says it won’t play ISO files.

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/pi...d-no-price-talk.3018474/page-80#post-61091584

If still no LX500 support for ISO, while “cloning” and burning the ISO would likely be way easier for a newbie like me, what’s the learning curve for a newbie for saving to an MKV file (s) all the above in a simply load and play BD-RE?

But will MKV support complete integrity of the original DTS MA 16 or 24 bit tracks?
___________________________

But wait, there’s likely more bad news. The LX500 manual says:

"This product uses Cinavia technology to limit the use of unauthorized copies of some commercially produced film and videos and their soundtracks. When a prohibited use of an unauthorized copy is
detected, a message will be displayed and playback or copying will be interrupted. More information about Cinavia ....... http://www.cinavia.com."

I don’t see the Cinavia logo on the artwork on any of my BDs, but I do often see the CP triangle. What kind of protection is that? Macrovision? Isn’t that only for VHS?

But how will I know beforehand if a BD movie disc has Cinavia?

Otherwise, if I understand correctly, if I opt to Cinavia disable in AnyDVD HD and/or Clone BD they will downgrade the DTS-MA audio? For me, that would defeat the purpose of doing any BD decrypting. Please advise.
--------------------------------------------------------

FWIW, I did find some file compatibility info in the LX500 manual but this site rejected the Word file I tried to upload. So check out p 10 thru 12
here https://intl.pioneer-audiovisual.com/manuals/docs/SN29403453_UDP-LX500_En_180703_web.pdf

BUT doing a Ctrl + F search of MKV I found nothing in the manual hinting that the player supports that film format. So, DTS-MA support or not, if the LX500 doesn’t support MKV then what?
 
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Presumably, the only option not hopeless would be to run AnyDVD HD
in the background, decrypting the BD movie “on the fly” while using https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Blu-ray to play it.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=77376.0

JRiver player will then give me region free, full zoom control, slow motion and not touch the DTS-MA, which I can then output via USB to a multichannel DAC like this https://exasound.com/Products/e688-channelDAC.aspx

But IR remote control support’s a bit questionable?
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,130930.0.html
 
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