Copy protection in WinDV !!

[mustardman]

An interesting event occurred to me the other day, I was attempting to dub a home video to my PC for NLE. I had recorded the tape (as in original footage) on a Canon MVX3i, but did not have the camera. So, I put the tape in a Sony TRV22e, where it would play just fine, but when I attempted to use WinDV to capture, it told me to rack off because the tape was copy protected! WTF? My own tape! It was not even a duplicate of the original, it was the original!

Not only was the event very disappointing, it was also rather enlightening. It means that the author of WinDV (Peter Mourek) not only knew quite a bit about the DV format to know where to look for copy protection flags, but that he also made the effort to honor them!

As far as I am aware, the DV specs are quite difficult to come by, and further (again, as far as I know) this is one of the reasons VDub did not have DV support (I have been out of touch for a few years, so it may no longer be the case - this import to the PC was my re-entry into the fold).

However, all this brought another rather nasty point into very sharp focus. If I lost my Canon, or it got trashed, or simply wore out - all my DV tapes would be useless. I could watch them, but that would be it (at least if I used a Sony).

Has anyone else had experiences, positive or negative, with any copy protection crap with self-produced tapes? (not interested in commercial stuff, copies or not).

Cheers,
MM.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Not only was the event very disappointing, it was also rather enlightening. It means that the author of WinDV (Peter Mourek) not only knew quite a bit about the DV format to know where to look for copy protection flags, but that he also made the effort to honor them!

I doubt that. Probably it's more the Sony camera that refuses to transfer the "copy protected" footage, so the software cannot do anything but reporting the problem to the user. WinDV, as it seems, is OpenSource software (click (http://windv.mourek.cz/download/WinDV-src-1.2.3.zip)). Consequently one could easily remove the part that blocks the transfer of "copy protected" footage from the code, making this kind of protection scheme pretty useless. Still doesn't explain why the Sony camera thinks your "home brew" footage was copy protected. If you can get your fingers on a third camera, you can try if it works with that one...

[Ghitulescu]

Maybe it's the Sony, you know, to discourage the users of buying another brand ...

Try another camcorder, try the things vice-versa (a Sony tape into the Canon), but if you still feel that's WinDVs' fault, just recompile it with "CP-ignore flag" :p ...

[2Bdecided]

This seems truly bizarre. Was the tape shot on the Canon MVX3i, or transferred onto the Canon MVX3i via the analogue inputs from something else?

Lots of camcorders don't let you copy "copy protected" content from the analogue inputs onto tape.

But how a tape that you recorded on the camcorder itself (i.e. through the lens) could be flagged "Copy Protected" is beyond me!

I have no idea what WinDV does, or even if it's WinDV that's at fault. IIRC the Enosoft DV Processor displays some of this metadata, if that's any help.

Cheers,
David.