[X4U] DVD copying

[Dennis R. Cohen]

On 8/4/07 at 9:44 PM, Stroller <macmonster at myrealbox.com> transmitted
the following electronic message:

>
>On 4 Aug 2007, at 21:27, Neil wrote:
>> OK, nobody here has mentioned MacTheRipper.  You mentioned having  
>> it, so why don't you just use that?  It works on copy protected  
>> content.  It preserves the DVD structure with menus and the  
>> original picture quality.  It uses very little CPU power and it's  
>> fast.  The files it produces are larger than the MP4 files made by  
>> HandBrake ...
>
>Also the MP4 files made by HandBrake will not be playable on a  
>standard DVD player.
>
>I believe that if you "rip" with a program that simply removes the  
>CSS "region protection" then the original DVD structure can simply be  
>copied onto a blank DVD-R which is viewable using a household player.
>
>CSS stands, I think, for "content scrambling system" and it's the  
>reason you can't simply drag & drop files from a store-bought DVD  
>onto a blank DVD-R. The scrambled content requires a decryption key  
>which is written in an area of the disk inaccessible to home DVD  
>writers.
>
>I hope this makes sense.
>

There are three separate "protection" considerations with commercial
DVDs: Region Codes, CSS, and Macrovision. MacTheRipper deals with all of
them and, once you've ripped to your hard disk, that content is
Region-free (aka Region 0), DeCSSed, and had the Macrovision removed.
This can now be written to a DVD-R, although you will often need either
a dual-layer burner and DVD+/-R DL blanks or software, such as Toast 8,
to compress the content to fit.

-- 
Dennis R. Cohen