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21st July 2010, 02:44 | #1 | Link |
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"Cinavia"/Verance BluRay audio watermark protection
(Although my findings neither prove nor disprove its existence) Playback of my MakeMKV full disc backup and movie-only backup (of the legitimate commercial BluRay "Losers" ) on both my SONY BDP S360 and PowerDVD v.7.3 on my PC proved to be totally normal - No splash screens advising of "Cinavia" protection, no disruption or termination of audio, no prevention of playback. ("Losers" supposedly contains this protection)
Then again, even if this "new" (It was first licensed to Universal Studios in 2003, for use with DVDs and VHS tapes - but likely never used) audio watermarking protection actually does exist on the original BluRay disc and was included in my backup copies, it shouldn't exhibit itself with my equipment because: According to press releases, only PS3s and "unnamed" standalone players manufactured during the third quarter of 2009 and more recently will be equipped with the required Cinavia "component" (whether hardware or firmware has not been disclosed) - and neither my standalone nor PowerDVD have ever been updated, so they pre-date this protection. It will be interesting to see what others may discover when they test their backups of the legitimate commercial BluRay on more current equipment. Based on the pre-release postings at other websites regarding sources that were obviously other-than the legitimate commercial BluRay discs, my (wishful) speculation is that at this time, we may discover that thusfar this protection has only been implemented regarding movie theater digital films, as a means of deterring true piracy via "cams" - and that's fine with me... Last edited by setarip_old; 28th January 2011 at 22:38. Reason: To add Verance to title |
21st July 2010, 17:59 | #3 | Link |
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in order to avoid wasting time and money on watermarked RETAIL BDs my i suggest to make a list with complete name (including "Limited", "Uncut", "Director's Cut", "Unrated", etc), region and anything else that will make easy to identify this new plague...
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21st July 2010, 18:18 | #4 | Link |
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I've been testing my legit US retail version of The Losers all day. I have some findings that will be of interest I think. I am testing on my PS3 with the latest firmware.
-ClownBD made movie only ISO burned to a BD RE SL Verbatim disc with just the DTS-HD MA audio track, the VC1 video track, and subtitles. Cinavia is detected at 20:03 into the movie. -Same disc, but set the PS3 to bitstream core DTS from the DTS-HD MA track instead of decoding to LPCM (my PS3 doesn't bitstream HD audio), Cinavia is detected again -Copy DVD version of The Losers with CloneDVD, movie only with no menus, onto a blank DVD+R. No Cinavia detected after 25 minutes of playback Tests to come...I'm going to rip the AC3 track from the DVD and mux it in with the VC1 video of the BD and burn it to my BD RE and see if it's detected in that. I want to make a MakeMKV MKV of it and stream it to my PS3 to see if that gets detected. I want to make an xvid and stream that to my PS3 to see if that gets detected. What a "fun" protection they seem to have given us to play with.
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21st July 2010, 18:58 | #5 | Link |
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considering that watermaked audio IS NOT an encryption-decryption problem and is effective against rebuilding could a moderator move this thread to rebuilding forum?
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21st July 2010, 19:33 | #7 | Link |
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Sure. I'll add it to the list. It looks as though the tests I have planned for today are going to take a while so it may be a day or two before I get everything accomplished. The disc also has a digital copy from iTunes and I know how to strip that DRM so I can play that, as well, but, it's *INCREDIBLY* unlikely the digital copy has Cinavia in it. Especially considering the DVD doesn't appear to. I'm in the middle of reauthoring a BD with the DVD's AC3 audio track to see if that'll work, but, my burner and discs aren't fast. So that'll take a while. I'm also testing some of the software players right now but don't expect they know about Cinavia yet.
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21st July 2010, 19:45 | #8 | Link |
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An obvious thing to try is to either -core the DTS-MA track or otherwise convert it to AC3 (using eac3to) and see if the remuxed BD is still Cinavia-ed.
Clearly not every BD disc is going to include another soundtrack somewhere to use... |
21st July 2010, 20:04 | #10 | Link |
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Thanks, I guess you knew that already!
It will be interesting to see whether any studio is brazen enough to produce a BD movie (Star Wars? Titanic? Avatar 3D?) which REQUIRES a player firmware update and which then INCLUDES a stealth update to force Cinavia. We'll update with caution! |
21st July 2010, 20:10 | #11 | Link | |
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Quote:
Oh, and you media streamer people...don't get so complacent. I've seen evidence that the WD Live players support Cinavia. So, streaming a backup of one of these discs will trigger it on those devices, too. What a pain.
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21st July 2010, 19:42 | #12 | Link | |
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@SamuriHL
Hi! Quote:
1) It would be a good idea for someone to try a BD-RB-compressed version on PS3s and standalones (As I stated, my equipment predates the protection). Although the audiostream(s) would be unaltered, it would be interesting to see whether the changed correlation to videoframes might impact the watermark detection. 2) As a point of information, I did not hear or see anything unusual at the 20:03 point when playing back the video on my equipment - so I'd guess that customer complaints about the protection "interfering" with or diminishing playback quality for ALL players would fall on deaf ears. 3) Did anyone else notice a strange visual glitch at somewhere around the 9:30 mark of the movie. As the helicopter rises, a 2 dimensional green graphic appears briefly and seems to be "pulled up" to the helicopter. I woder if this could possibly have something to do with the protection... |
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21st April 2012, 12:54 | #13 | Link | |
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Quote:
And if that dosen't work, we need to stop fooling around and build an app that will download a list of movies with a list of each and every Cinavia beep, and remove them from the audio. There are two ways we can do that, we can either analyze each track the whole time and find out if the beeps are systematic, if they are, we can choose to only include the original beep time code and the frequency of the beeps, to save time. Last edited by marcusj0015; 21st April 2012 at 12:58. |
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21st July 2010, 19:48 | #14 | Link |
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i think the studios are focusing to BDs (need constant firmware updates so the penetration will be very good) and CAMs and not SDs (no firmware updates so no penetration!)...when they realize that you can rebuild BDs with SDs audio they will start to audio watermark the SDs too...
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21st July 2010, 19:53 | #15 | Link | |
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Quote:
A little background for those that don't fully get how it works. They embed an (inaudible lol) signal into the audio stream. The signal will survive all re-encoding attempts and even analog recording, and yes, this has been tested by others. So no matter what format you think you can convert it to, the Cinavia signal will still be present and detectable on Cinavia enabled equipment. However, and here's the kicker, it *REQUIRES* a Cinavia enabled player to detect the signal and then follow the "rules" for playback. (Message 1 is typically a CAM recording, Message 3 is typically a copied Blu-ray recording). If the player doesn't know how to detect it, or simply doesn't care, then this protection is useless. Just something to consider.
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21st July 2010, 19:49 | #16 | Link |
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I only have a PS3 and my two HTPC's. My HTPC's have the latest versions of PDVD10, TMT3, and WinDVD2010. I'm attempting to play on TMT3 right now but it doesn't seem to detect it.
As for BD-RB, I'm not sure if it'll work on my machine as I have specific ffdshow versions I use that may or may not work with BD-RB. The 20 minute mark isn't a specific point. The technology seems to require a 20 minute segment to be played for detection of this. It's not an exact point on the disc where the protection exists. The Cinavia signal (for lack of better terminology) is embedded in the audio signal and survives all re-encoding and even analog recording attempts. To test that last one, someone setup a camcorder pointed at their wall with The Losers running in the background. The playback of the recorded video (with the Losers audio in the background) triggered the Cinavia message 3 error on his PS3. As for the argument about whether this stuff is audible or not, I'm not going to entertain that discussion as it's very subjective. Some people may, most won't. It's similar to the 48/16 downsampling discussion. I did not notice a glitch, no.
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21st July 2010, 20:01 | #17 | Link |
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If anyone with more technical knowledge than I have is interested, here's a link I came upon, to a "challenge" regarding audio watermarking, dating back to 2001:
http://www.usenix.org/publications/l...c01/craver.pdf |
21st July 2010, 20:13 | #18 | Link |
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the low end NMTs selling will be boosted to the roof!
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21st July 2010, 20:15 | #19 | Link |
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HEHE, see my last comment. As long as they don't get updated to support this stuff. I'm not even sure if older equipment CAN get updated but I'm just speculating. Man would that suck. I'll stick with ffdshow. I'm fairly sure Albain has no interest in adding Cinavia support.
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21st July 2010, 20:33 | #20 | Link |
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Another thought I just had: if this stuff makes backups impossible, I for one might not buy another BD, but rather rent it instead! If I can't manipulate it to the backup I prefer (no intros/movie only, smaller &/or repositioned subtitles mainly) then why buy it if a rental option exists.
I wouldn't be alone in this; so the "purchase" market shrinks, and might they try to put "rental" shops out-of-business also--hell I doubt it, there are too many Mom & Pop businesses, much less large rental businesses, which would be affected. Hollywood wouldn't shoot itself in that way, would it? |
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