How does AnyDVD tackle playlist obfuscation?

[fatherom]

Could someone give me a semi-technical explanation of what AnyDVD actually does/alters when ripping a movie (like Mockingjay Part 1) to ISO? I guess, in my mind, I figure, if you're ripping the whole disc to ISO, don't the "smarts" that tell the player what playlist to use come along with the rip?

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Ch3vr0n]

How it does it is proprieraty technology, they won't disclose that. However the technology itself works like this. There's a few good playlists and a lot of bad ones, the protection asks the player for authentication ,if its good it redirects the player to one of the correct playlists. Now, if the encryption isn't properly removed, the protection detects that and redirects the player to one of the playlists at random which has the scenes all mixed up.

 

[Turtleggjp]

If I may refine your answer slightly, I believe (since I've never used a commercial player or stand alone player with one of these discs) that if it determines that the encryption has been removed, it directs the player to the (usually one) playlist that includes the "copy detected" message, and possibly has the scenes mixed up or repeated. All the other playlists are intended to confuse tools like EAC3To (and those based on it) by effectively hiding the correct playlist among hundreds of bogus ones.

As for how AnyDVD HD determines the correct playlist, I would imagine that could be done by examining the Java code on the disc. Once the correct playlist is found, it is added to the OPD, so it can be displayed in the status window. Of course, as we all saw recently, this information is NOT cached locally, so it will depend on the OPD for a while (not sure if this information eventually ends up being added to AnyDVD's code or not like AACS keys and BD+ info).

 

[kiwipeter]

Thanks to you all for this interesting information - I'd always thought that obfuscation tricked the ripping app into believing the backup was too large to fit on a disc. Live and learn!

Great word though, obfuscate - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obfuscate

 

[Turtleggjp]

I think this type of copy protection where the disc appears too large is only found on DVDs. I've never looked at one, but I think 3D Blu Rays also look too big too if you look at just the files on the disc, since multiple files occupy the same data on the disc.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

@kiwipeter you're mixing up structural protection (DVD only, oversized appearance), with playlist obfuscation (redirecting to fake playlist). 2 completely different things

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[kiwipeter]

@kiwipeter you're mixing up structural protection (DVD only, oversized appearance), with playlist obfuscation (redirecting to fake playlist). 2 completely different things

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Ah yes, it's all coming back to me now! Thanks.

 

[rik1138]

How it does it is proprieraty technology, they won't disclose that. However the technology itself works like this. There's a few good playlists and a lot of bad ones, the protection asks the player for authentication ,if its good it redirects the player to one of the correct playlists. Now, if the encryption isn't properly removed, the protection detects that and redirects the player to one of the playlists at random which has the scenes all mixed up.

Once you know for a fact which PlayList is the correct one, you could just over-write _all_ the other 'bad' ones with that correct one... Then it wouldn't matter what PlayList the Java code launched, it'd still be correct.