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Old 21st July 2010, 02:44   #1  |  Link
setarip_old
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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
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Old 21st July 2010, 11:44   #2  |  Link
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Originally Posted by setarip_old View Post
Based on the pre-release postings at other websites regarding sources that were obviously other-than the legitimate commercial BluRay discs,]
As I said in the other thread, just because someone has received the disc early doesn't mean it is an illegitimate disc.
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Old 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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Old 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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Old 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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Last edited by b66pak; 21st July 2010 at 19:33.
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Old 21st July 2010, 19:28   #6  |  Link
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SamuriHL, could you also try to reencode the movie to an .mp4 (AVC/AAC) and see if the PS3 also checks if the watermark is there in that case if you have time for that?
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Old 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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Old 21st July 2010, 19:42   #8  |  Link
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@SamuriHL

Hi!
Quote:
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.
In addition to your PS3, did you try playing this on a (any) standalone BluRay player(s)?

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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Old 21st July 2010, 19:45   #9  |  Link
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Sure. I'll add it to the list.
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...
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Old 21st July 2010, 19:48   #10  |  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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Old 21st July 2010, 19:49   #11  |  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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Old 21st July 2010, 19:49   #12  |  Link
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Originally Posted by laserfan View Post
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...
It survives re-encoding. So that will not help.
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Old 21st July 2010, 19:53   #13  |  Link
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Originally Posted by b66pak View Post
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...
_
Certainly possible. In any case, this idiotic protection is not going to impact me in the least. For the PS3 I'll use my original. For backups I use MakeMKV to create MKV's that I then play using WMP/7MC with ffdshow anyway, so, this protection is pointless.

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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Old 21st July 2010, 20:01   #14  |  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
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Old 21st July 2010, 20:04   #15  |  Link
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It survives re-encoding. So that will not help.
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!
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Old 21st July 2010, 20:10   #16  |  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!
My fear is far worse than that. I'm not sure how much trouble they'd get in for implementing my thought, though. *IF*, and I really don't know if this is possible but, IF players made before Q4 2009 (all players since have Cinavia built in....surprise! ) can be updated by firmware to detect Cinavia, then there is a really ugly possibility. The AACS LA could revoke the player keys of all players that don't support Cinavia but could support it with a firmware update. This would force everyone with such a player to update in order to play original discs. Please understand that this is fear mongering speculation on my part. Simply a brainstorming "what if/what is possible" scenario. I don't even know if a firmware update would make older players detect this nonsense. But if so, then my scenario isn't impossible to imagine. All it would take is popping in a new disc that has your player key revoked and a "hey, you need a new firmware to play um ANY disc" message and poof...game over for that player and backups that contain Cinavia. And since all the studios have signed on to use this, it's only a matter of time before this gets nasty.

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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Old 21st July 2010, 20:13   #17  |  Link
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the low end NMTs selling will be boosted to the roof!
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Old 21st July 2010, 20:15   #18  |  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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Old 21st July 2010, 20:27   #19  |  Link
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The AACS LA could revoke the player keys of all players that don't support Cinavia but could support it with a firmware update. This would force everyone with such a player to update in order to play original discs.
I guess the $64 question is whether a "simple" firmware update is all that's required, or if there's more to it in order for a player to detect Cinavia. Guess we'll find out sooner rather than later though!
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Old 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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