Strange DVD "encryption"
Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 9:11 pm
I lost my oldest brother to esophageal & liver cancers just after this past Christmas. The funeral home that handled the service and cremation did a 10 minute video presentation which was posted online for a brief time. They gave my niece one copy on DVD as part of the burial "package" but charge $49 for each additional copy. I tried every tool and utility I know of to make a copy but I've never seen anything like this. Down to the last one I tried I kept getting read error, unrecognized media or failed to initialize messages.
I was using my laptop while I was down there so I opened up the disc in Explorer. There were the two usual TS_Audio/Video folders: nothing in audio and and assortment of VOB, IFO and BUP files in video. The oddball thing was that there were 40+ instances of the one main VOB file that was over 800 MB. I had to leave the next day and my niece's husband didn't want to part with the only copy of the disc they had so I figured I'd just copy the files over and work with them when I got back home.
But when I started copying the files, Windows showed I was copying over 80 GB(!) of data and estimated 3 days for it to complete. So I canceled the copy, cleared everything then selected the files to copy again. My great-nephew and great-great-niece came over to see what I was doing so I got involved in keeping them distracted from my laptop. About 30 minutes later I got back to the task at hand and there was still over 80 GB to be copied. So I canceled everything and checked the properties of the disc. It came up as 0 bytes free of 1.25 GB. I tried opening several different copies of the VOB file on the disc and the presentation played just fine. There seemed to be no difference between any of the VOB files. The presentation played the same way each time.
Totally befuddled, I tried copying just one of the 800 MB VOB files but all the other files over. That copied over just fine but the slideshow would not play. It would open just like it was supposed to but after less than a second, it just stopped.
I figure those multiple copies of the main VOB file have to be essentially pointers for the other IFO and BUP files to enable the presentation to run but I'll be hanged if I can figure out how the disc can fool Windows into believing there are 80 GB of data on a standard DVD.
Have any of you encountered an "encryption" like this? Any ideas how to make a copy of it? I'm open for any suggestions. There are nearly 2 dozen family members who would like a copy of this disc but not at that price.
Thanks!
Jack
I was using my laptop while I was down there so I opened up the disc in Explorer. There were the two usual TS_Audio/Video folders: nothing in audio and and assortment of VOB, IFO and BUP files in video. The oddball thing was that there were 40+ instances of the one main VOB file that was over 800 MB. I had to leave the next day and my niece's husband didn't want to part with the only copy of the disc they had so I figured I'd just copy the files over and work with them when I got back home.
But when I started copying the files, Windows showed I was copying over 80 GB(!) of data and estimated 3 days for it to complete. So I canceled the copy, cleared everything then selected the files to copy again. My great-nephew and great-great-niece came over to see what I was doing so I got involved in keeping them distracted from my laptop. About 30 minutes later I got back to the task at hand and there was still over 80 GB to be copied. So I canceled everything and checked the properties of the disc. It came up as 0 bytes free of 1.25 GB. I tried opening several different copies of the VOB file on the disc and the presentation played just fine. There seemed to be no difference between any of the VOB files. The presentation played the same way each time.
Totally befuddled, I tried copying just one of the 800 MB VOB files but all the other files over. That copied over just fine but the slideshow would not play. It would open just like it was supposed to but after less than a second, it just stopped.
I figure those multiple copies of the main VOB file have to be essentially pointers for the other IFO and BUP files to enable the presentation to run but I'll be hanged if I can figure out how the disc can fool Windows into believing there are 80 GB of data on a standard DVD.
Have any of you encountered an "encryption" like this? Any ideas how to make a copy of it? I'm open for any suggestions. There are nearly 2 dozen family members who would like a copy of this disc but not at that price.
Thanks!
Jack