How to Tell if a Disc Has Screenpass Protection

[My Life Is Tech]

How do you test a disc (DVD or Blu-ray) to see if it has screenpass protection, and how can you tell if AnyDVD HD decrypted it correctly? And if it did not decrypt it correctly, how can you manually figure out which is the real title and select it within AnyDVD HD?

I would like to find a quick method to check for screenpass protection without having to watch every movie I rip to image.

Please reply soon, thank you.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

how to tell?

multiple ways.

1) check the anydvd status window it will say something like "good playlist: ...."
2) check the stream\mpls folder, if it's screenpass protected there will be a couple hundred playlists there of the same filesize

How to tell anydvd "failed":

The main one will be you start movie playback and some time into the movie a copyright notice could appear for a few seconds, then continue back to the movie. That's the main giveaway. In there https://forum.slysoft.com/forumdisplay.php?86-High-Definition-Software forum section there's a few topics on how to find the right one (the easiest one is to play the movie with anydvd disabled, then load process explorer. Using a filter it will show the correct playlist being used by the software player.

To update anydvd to display the correct playlist, an anydvd logfile is required. Instructions on how to provide one you can find in the sticky up top. For the most part anydvd will work fine, screenpass/playlist obfuscation isn't that widely used compared to BD+

 

[My Life Is Tech]

Where exactly is the stream/mpls folder located?

And if AnyDVD HD did fail to decrypt the disc successfully, is there a way to first discover the correct playlist in software like PowerDVD (without using process explorer) and then select that playlist in AnyDVD HD without going to the form and posting a log file?

I think I had a Disney's Bolt DVD that may have had some form of protection similar to Screenpass, in that it had about 99 titles, several of the same "file size" making the disc look like it was 47 GB or some ridiculous file size, and when ripping to HDD it would loop a certain part twice during playback, but ripping to image it did not do this.

P.S. Is the Process Explorer you are referring to the one from Sysinternals?

 

[Ch3vr0n]

Sorry that was a typo. Playlists are at BDMV\PLAYLIST and there you'll find all the mpls files

If anydvd DID succesfully decrypt the disc that has playlist obfuscation, it will be displayed in the status window as i already said. a tool like BDInfo http://www.videohelp.com/software/BDInfo is able to analyze all the playlists and show you the duration of the video played by it. It won't tell you however if its the only valid one. Sometimes there's multiple valid ones called "angles" where the only difference is for example the credits or opening sequence in a different language.

Finding the correct playlist without such a tool is a complicated one. It requires playing the individual movie clips (if the main movie is split up into multiple parts) and combining them into the proper sequence then verifying your sequence against a small tool that was developped by a user here https://forum.slysoft.com/showthrea...for-no-commercial-players&p=406479#post406479

To update anydvd there is no way around it, a logfile IS required as it holds vital disc information needed to update anydvd or the OPD.

The max a full size BD50 can hold is 45.5GB.

and no, its not from sysinternals. The proper name is "Windows Process Monitor", a short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlhBmIbReao will tell you how to setup the "mpls filter". using the process monitor is the easiest way, start the playback of the MOVIE itself THEN fire up that monitor. It's vital that you don't launch it until the movie itself starts playing.

 

[My Life Is Tech]

How would I go about combining the parts into a sequence? Also, once the correct sequence is found, when attaching the logfile, should we mention which mpls we believe is the correct one?

(By the way, just out of curiosity, is there any particular reason a pirated copy of software such as PowerDVD wouldn't work? Is there any difference between the legally bought and illegally obtained players if it's a copy of the latest version/patch?)

 

[Ch3vr0n]

how? simple

open notepad and write down the numbers in sequence then compare

mention the correct one, if you manage to find it yes ofcourse. Slysoft will still analyze the log. However it is important in that case you mention all relevant release details such as barcode, region, type of release (rentail, retail,...) link to the actual movie, ... because a single disc may be different from a double disc, and a double disc standard packaging may be different from a double disc steelbook edition etc... Doing so will enable some users here to verify if your actual playlist guess is a correct one, and don't forget the logfile naturally

about your curiosity, take my word for it. It works just fine The only one that apparantly doesn't work by that video creator is TMT 6 but you can forget about that one. Arcsoft stopped selling their blu-ray player a while ago. PowerDVD and WinDVD are now the only 2 licensed blu-ray software players.

 

[Roycal]

This video shows how to find the correct playlist from an original screenpass protected disk with a legal copy of PDVD. Not sure if it works with a pirated copy of PDVD since I don't have that. But it does require a valid protected original disk and won't work with an 'unprotected' copy of the disk

https://youtu.be/AlhBmIbReao

 

[My Life Is Tech]

Sorry to reboot this thread, but I was just wondering. Would it be possible for SlySoft or someone to build software, or a small utility that could analyse DVDs and Blu-rays and check for screenpass protection, and then find the correct title/playlist on its own, and report the correct playlist sequence to the user?

Though I know this could be a bit difficult as some movies may be split into multiple parts, or have angles. If it could possibly find angles, then maybe it could mark certain playlists as angles, and find the valid chapters. (Sorry if none of that makes sense, I'm not the best at explaining things. Thus why I could never become a teacher. )

This would be very convenient rather then having to use multiple pieces of software and having to watch the whole movie after it's been ripped just to verify that it does not contain screenpass. It would save loads of time, and help prevent confusion. Plus, I don't want to watch every single movie I rip just to verify it, when I can spend that hour and a half to two hours doing something more important.

Hopefully this sounds worthwhile to develop, and sorry if I just wasted your time rambling on something that doesn't have a chance. I also don't want to annoy anyone with useless and seemingly dumb posts.

 

[Roycal]

I agree that is a good project but not easily achieved on a fully automated level.

What I would like to see is just a simple window that shows the current playlist and stream file that PDVD is playing.
At least that way you could easily see the current and correct playlist with a one button click.

Trying to completely automate the process of determining if it's actually screenpass protected and picking out the correct playlist gets much more complicated.

 

[My Life Is Tech]

Now there's an idea, that does seem simpler to make a small utility that can read the playlist PowerDVD is reading. At least then we might know what the valid playlist is. Then, it would be nice to have the feature in AnyDVD HD to have a separate tab for screenpass protection, (for advanced users of course, you don't want just anybody messing with the playlist and selecting the wrong one because they don't know what they're doing.) and in that tab, it allows you to select the correct playlist verified by the utility. Maybe even implementing the utility into AnyDVD HD itself. (Just make sure you disable the decription first, then it can be used alongside PowerDVD to automatically select the correct playlist. (Possibly? )

Might be simpler to make it a separate utility though.

And quick question. Do you know if the extras on the screenpass-protected discs are also protected, or would it just be the main movie? That could make things even more complex. :doh:

On an unrelated note:
:bang: Ugh, I so despise copy protection, all they're doing is making legal use and backups so much harder than it needs to be. Meanwhile, they seem to be making pirating worse. Possibly because they don't want to deal with the copy protection just to back it up for their own personal and perfectly legal use.

 

[Roycal]

Do you know if the extras on the screenpass-protected discs are also protected, or would it just be the main movie? That could make things even more complex.....

Every stream has a corresponding playlist. The playlist that points to extras, main menu, etc.. is not the same playlist that plays the main feature. Those playlists can also be obfuscated with screenpass though there is less motivation to protect them. Usually you can load the menu with the screenpass protection only later to mock you with a copy message.

What ever you're playing on PDVD (with the original disk and AnyDVDHD unloaded) at the time would show the current playlist and stream file in the window I'm suggesting.
I've been thinking about taking that task up myself actually .

Since "process monitor" is a Microsoft product, there should be an API for windows programmers? Otherwise most likely there are other open source apps or task monitoring that would work.

 

[My Life Is Tech]

If you do decide to take on the task, I would support you fully. It would most certainly be useful. And if you could somehow convince SlySoft to add the feature to be able specify valid playlists in AnyDVD HD, that would be great. But at any rate, I wish you good luck if you do decide to take it on. :clap: