Copy Protection? Help Identifying Which One

[Dragoniade]

Hello,

A friend of mine sent me some of his tapes for me to capture. They are 3 master tapes for a show, in PAL format. I got myself a PAL vcr and hooked it to my capture card, a Sapphire theater 650 (namely an ATI of the same revision).

I managed to capture 2 of the tapes perfectly with Virtual Dub. But when I put the 3rd tape in, all I would get was some 'rainbow snow' embossing the normal pictures. If I were to pause and play, I would get a perfect image for about 1-2 seconds, then the snow would return.

I know about macrovision, but as far as I knew, it would play with the color and stripe, not the whole picture.

Does anyone know what kind of protection this is?
Is it the card way to apply macrovision to the stream?
Is there a know way around it if it happen not to be macrovision?

Thanks

Dragoniade
http://www.dragoniade.com:8081/CopyProtection/MasterTapeRecord.jpg

[linyx]

I personally have very little knowledge on this subject, but this (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/SupportUtils/DisableATIMacrovisionDetection.zip) may be of some help. Taken from the Doom9 Downloads page.
ATI Macrovision remover - removes macrovision from the TV input of your ATI card

[olyteddy]

Are you sure that's Copy Protection and not a head clog?

[Dragoniade]

Are you sure that's Copy Protection and not a head clog?

Yes. This only occurs with this particular tape. My friend told me he had the same problem when trying to backup that tape: it would play fine but not copy. Also, when starting the playback, the image would be fine for 1 second or so until, I would guess, the copy protection detection would kick in.

Sadly, the fix suggested in the previous post didn't work. It wouldn't find my drivers in my XP x64 installation.

[setarip_old]

Hi! all I would get was some 'rainbow snow' embossing the normal pictures. If I were to pause and play, I would get a perfect image for about 1-2 seconds, then the snow would return.My friend told me he had the same problem when trying to backup that tape: it would play fine but not copy. Also, when starting the playback, the image would be fine for 1 second or so until, I would guess, the copy protection detection would kick in.Please clarify - Does the tape NOW play properly (without attempting to copy)?

I ask because the image has the appearance of a previously recorded tape that has inadvertently been put in a player that was then set to "Record"...

BTW - Have you tried starting the recording further into the tape at, perhaps 20 minutes?

[Dragoniade]

The tape play properly on a TV. It's the playback/capture on the PC that produce that kind of images.
I've also already tried to playback various segment of the tape (forwarded 10 minutes, tried again, and so on with the whole tape). No success.

This really sound like a copy protection. But what I'm unaware of is if this kind of garble are the result of the driver/card implementing their own block of macrovision (aka turning the whole images into garble rather than just preventing the copy) or a totally nonstandard protection.

[hanfrunz]

You need a timebasecorrector (tbc). Maybe you can get a "cheap" one on ebay (http://shop.ebay.com/items/__time-base-corrector_W0QQ_nkwZtimeQ20baseQ20correctorQ20QQ_cqrZtrueQQ_nkwuscZtimebaseQQ_nkwuscZcorrector). Or ask a professional broadcast equipment rental house for a good price to rent one.

hanfrunz