A newbie's take on how to get rid of the DVD X Copy 321 splash screen

[Just_a_boy]

Pardon me if this has been covered before, or if it seems mundane. I did a search and didn't find it so I decided to report my results.

Like everyone else I've ever heard discuss it, I hate the stupid "321 Studios" splash screen that DVD X Copy puts into a DVD. I don't hate it so much for the annoyance of the message, but mainly for the fact that I couldn't open those disks in Shrink. It always said Invalid DVD Structure or else Overlapped I/O. So I have been experimenting a lot and reading archived posts on the subject, but the solutions I've found were pretty complex and usually involved software that I wasn't familiar with.

Well, I finally stumbled on an extremely fast and simple answer that only requires a few minutes and a couple lightweight little freeware programs. The solution below allows the disk to be opened and manipulated in Shrink like any other disk, including replacing the annoying splash screen with a still image if you want.

All I did was import the disk to my hard drive with Decrypter, then move all of the VIDEO_TS.* and *.BUP and *.IFO files away to a temp directory. This left only the VTS*.VOB files in the working directory. Next I launched FixVTS and went to the working directory and opened VTS_01_1.VOB and checked all three of the tickboxes:

x Remove unref. and blank cells
x Fix wrong PGC LBA pointers
x In place (no backup!)

Then I clicked the "Full DVD" button and gave the OK to the warning that I was not making a backup.

When it was done about three or four minutes later, I moved all of the VIDEO_TS.* and *.BUP and *.IFO files from the temp directory back to the working directory, then went back to FixVTS and opened VIDEO_TS.VOB and again clicked "Full DVD" and let it roll. Three or four minutes later it was done.

Next I opened that working directory in Skrink, and replaced the 321 screen wih a still image, and copied the whole works to a different drive and then burned it and presto, the menus all work the same, the languages, the subtitles, everything is like any other good backup, except now the annoying screen is replaced with 8 seconds of my still frame and Shrink can handle the disk from now on. I have done this process with complete success on three different disks,

And that's all I have to say about that!

[linx05]

Would it be better to just use a different program? e.g. AnyDVD, RipIt4Me or DVDFab Decrypter?

[Just_a_boy]

linx05, I can't say whether AnyDVD or DVDFab Decrypter would be better because I haven't tried them. I did try RipIt4Me and it launches Decrypter, FixVTS, and Shrink one right after another, just like my solution. Problem is, the result was a dodgy structure that wouldn't behave properly. But when I took all the "small" files out and ran FixVTS, then put them back and ran it again, it worked so perfectly and smoothly that I decided to share it as an alternate solution. I'm not saying it's "right" or "best", just that a third grader could handle it, as opposed to the many solutions I found that are much more complex.

[setarip_old]

I'm not intending to sound offensive but, I believe you'll find a genuine lack of interest in anything to do with making copies from copies (You can always make a new backup from your original DVD) - and from a program that's been dead for more than two years at that ;>}

[Just_a_boy]

Hmm, good point, but a lot of them are still in circulation though. I got a couple from a friend recently that weren't even commercial material, he just used X Copy to make the copies, and that's what got me started looking for answers. So maybe other newbies will be looking for answers too. Anyway, it was a fun exercise :)

[setarip_old]

I got a couple from a friend recently that weren't even commercial material, he just used X Copy to make the copiesWhy would anybody create a (feeble though it may be) copy protected backup copy of a non-commercial, non-protected DVD?

[CWR03]

I tried 321 Studio's DVD X Copy and found it to be a horribly buggy program that rarely completed a project, and when it did the results were horrible. It promised many things it couldn't deliver, including "a full DVD backup on a CD-R disk at a quality virtually indistinguishable from the original." There's no reason to use it on a non-copy-protected disk since you can just make a 1:1 copy with any burning program, and other programs (mostly freeware such as DVD Shrink) are far better in quality, easier to use and in my experience never crash. There's also no advertisement of the program included into the backup copy.