"Cinavia"/Verance BluRay audio watermark protection

[setarip_old]

(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...

[kieranrk]

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.

[b66pak]

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...
_

[SamuriHL]

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. :D

[b66pak]

considering that watermaked audio IS NOT an encryption-decryption problem and is effective against rebuilding could a moderator move this thread to rebuilding forum?
_

[nurbs]

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?

[SamuriHL]

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.

[setarip_old]

@SamuriHL

Hi! 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...

[laserfan]

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...

[b66pak]

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...
_

[SamuriHL]

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.

[SamuriHL]

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.

[SamuriHL]

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. ;)

[setarip_old]

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/library/proceedings/sec01/craver.pdf

[laserfan]

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! :)

[SamuriHL]

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! :D) 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. :devil: What a pain.

[b66pak]

the low end NMTs selling will be boosted to the roof!
_

[SamuriHL]

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. :D

[laserfan]

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!

[laserfan]

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? :D

[SamuriHL]

I don't know the answer on the firmware update thing. James at SlySoft doesn't think it's possible to update older players with just a firmware update. I honestly don't know.

They're trying to "kill" the rental market now as it is by doing the 30 day delay nonsense. They're under the delusion that people will buy more BD's if they have to wait an extra 30 days to rent them. LOL! So yes, Hollywood WOULD shoot itself. No question.

[setarip_old]

As long as speculation appears to be the order of the day:

If (and I don't know why this would be the case) DVDs are not subjected to this protection, with more and more people realizing that most BluRay disc "Extras" are of little or no more interest/value than those of DVDs - and that the upconverting playback quality of most newer BluRay players ranges from "quite acceptable" to "excellent" - it's conceivable that the viewing public might redirect more of its entertainment dollars to good ol' DVDs (Yes, I consider the "new" BluRay 3D to be nothing more than a marketing ploy)...

[SamuriHL]

That's possible, too. Really depends on how many people backup their library, and how many of those will be affected by this. (I.E. using hardware players that contain Cinavia) Since the PS3 is one of the most popular BD players out there, I can see this becoming an issue for many people. It's the media streaming people that I'm most concerned about, though. Most of those devices don't have the option of playing the original like the BD player people do. So, for their device to be useful at all, it can't support Cinavia. That's a real slap in the face to that group. Anyway, we'll see if DVD's start getting this, too, as it's technically possible.

[Inspector.Gadget]

Technically possible on modern devices, sure, but think about how many DVD players can't receive firmware updates - and think about how many non-bleeding edge users that would alienate. IMO that's even more of a shot in the studios' own feet than putting it in BDs.

[SamuriHL]

I agree. This whole protection is idiotic for many reasons. But, I know that it's a requirement for any AACS LA licensed players to support it. You can bet that means the big 3 software players will get it soon, too. As for DVD, the only reason I could see to add it there is to close off a potential loophole for BD. If what I'm currently working on works, for example, then not putting it on the DVD allows people to remux the AC3 or DTS audio stream from the DVD into a backup of the BD. That'll bypass it completely. So, any time they release an open audio stream, it defeats the purpose of even bothering for the BD. Yea, I know, it's not HD audio. But, will that matter to the pirates they're trying to stop? Seems unlikely given the format of choice they're using these days. It's going to annoy those of us who buy a large library of discs and want to protect that investment by making backups. Not to mention I like having my whole library in an easy to use format (MKV) on my HTPC so I can stream it anywhere in my house without having to go grab the original off the shelf. Very convenient. If they stop people from being able to do those things, they very well may kill BD completely.

[setarip_old]

Maybe now people will stop questioning my BluRay to HD-DVD converting...

[SamuriHL]

Maybe now people will stop questioning my BluRay to HD-DVD converting...

LOL. I suppose that's one way to go. It's a pretty sure bet that there aren't any HD DVD players that support Cinavia out there. :D Personally I'd rather just convert everything (including my HD DVD's) to MKV and be done with it. Given the rock solid performance I get with ffdshow in all DShow apps (and WMP/7MC with Win7DSTweaker), I'm set using that method. It's the hardware people I worry about. If they can hold on to their players that don't support it without being forced to update, that's great. The PS3 users are not so lucky as they're forced to update to be able to play games online. :( But, hey, if you're happy with your workaround, it's all good. :)

[Revgen]

If all they are doing is producing a non-audible signal, then can't this signal just be altered by adding noise?

[SamuriHL]

Not without destroying the audio. It's not just embedded in the "non-audible" range from what I understand. They engineered it to not be audible, but, it's deeply embedded in the original audio track before mastering. I don't quite understand how the whole thing works, but, I understand enough of it to know that without being able to first detect it inside the audio track, there's absolutely no way to think about removing it. Apparently this is from the same company that did the watermarks for DVD-A.

[setarip_old]

This is perhaps a bit farfetched, but at this stage anythig goes:

Thusfar, all the testing has been predicated on what has been made public. Has anyone tried extracting the VIDEOstream and playing it by itself - to see if the "CINAVIA" protection is triggered?

[SamuriHL]

I'm doing a test that should more or less match that. I have it burning now. I took the AC3 track from the DVD and muxed it in with the video stream from the BD. :D I'm burning that to a BD-RE now and will test it. We'll see what happens.

[SamuriHL]

Good bye, Cinavia. My BD-RE with the DVD's audio track muxed in works fine. No Cinavia. Understand that the *ONLY* difference from my disc that has Cinavia and the one that doesn't is a switch of the audio track. Chapters, subtitles, and the video track are all identical on both discs. So, there, you have a work around for any BD that comes with a DVD, as well. :)

[setarip_old]

So, there, you have a work around for any BD that comes with a DVD, as well.Nice to know that's the case for the moment, at least.

It won't take much effort to make minor adjustments to vary total length of DVD versus BluRay, beginning "black space", opening studio credits, etc...

[SamuriHL]

I don't consider it a permanent solution. The studios will likely just add it to the DVD next time. (This, btw, would be WHY they'd add it to the DVD. Not because DVD players can detect it, but, because ANY audio source not protected could be used to replace the audio on a protected backup) In any case, ALL of my testing has simply been academic. I have a solution. I just wanted to provide some real world data for people to mull over. I hope it's been useful and I'll continue to do more tests as time goes on.

[Keiyakusha]

Someone will have to study the differences (Is there some DVDs with PCM audio?) and then simulate Cinavia :Р

EDIT: What I mean is if you will be able to produce cinavia - you will be sure that you found what you looking for and not some random noise from the street. Then you can think of some counter-measure.

[setarip_old]

As I said in the initial post, it will be interesting to see what others may discover when they test their backups of the legitimate commercial BluRay on more current equipment.

I'm surprised there haven't been more participants to this thread, as the more information we all see and share, the better to hopefully separate truth from fiction...

[SamuriHL]

Well, with only ONE disc out in the wild right now with this protection on it, and not a particular GREAT movie at that, it's not all that surprising. We'll have to see how many titles get this foolish protection going forward. AFAIK, all the studios have signed on board and the AACS LA has required all new players sold since Q4 2009 to have this protection detection in place. So yea, I suspect as we go along, this will become more and more of a problem for people.

[HWK]

Hmm, Let's hope they don't add similar copy protection to video stream.

[Peer van Heuen]

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

The technology seems to require a 20 minute segment to be played for detection of this.

Just to avoid misconceptions: it has been speculated numerous times, that the actual detection of the watermark would take 20 minutes (because it's so hard to detect).
That is very, very unlikely. Consider, that you can (and it is officially condoned) simply pause playback for at least 10 minutes and you will get another 20 minutes of unmuted playback.
I suppose this type of reaction to the wm is embedded in the watermark itself - as other types of cinavia watermarks found on bootlegs seem to trigger it right away (haven't tried that myself, but it has been stated somewhere).

It's possibly just make it more difficult to defeat it - if every attempt to do so will require at least 20 minutes of testing afterwards.
Defeating it on cam recordings is a little more difficult anyway, as there is no real "unmarked" audio stream to compare with (the cam recording adds so much noise itself that you won't be able to tell the difference between a mark and trash frequencies), while with blu-rays there obviously is.

I'm pretty sure you'll be able to reliably detect the watermark in any chunk of a few seconds length taken out of the audio stream.

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... [/Color]

Totally agreed. They could have gone on doing that for ages to come. But now, after introducing it to blu-rays, they've drawn so much attention to this protection, that it will probably not survive a year....

it will be interesting to see what others may discover when they test their backups of the legitimate commercial BluRay on more current equipment.

So far I have only seen mentionings of the Pioneer BDP-V6000 having the detection on board. No actual confirmations so far.

[deets]

am i being overly paranoid, could they put this in the PSP as well?

[SamuriHL]

Just to avoid misconceptions: it has been speculated numerous times, that the actual detection of the watermark would take 20 minutes (because it's so hard to detect).
That is very, very unlikely. Consider, that you can (and it is officially condoned) simply pause playback for at least 10 minutes and you will get another 20 minutes of unmuted playback.
I suppose this type of reaction to the wm is embedded in the watermark itself - as other types of cinavia watermarks found on bootlegs seem to trigger it right away (haven't tried that myself, but it has been stated somewhere).

It's possibly just make it more difficult to defeat it - if every attempt to do so will require at least 20 minutes of testing afterwards.
Defeating it on cam recordings is a little more difficult anyway, as there is no real "unmarked" audio stream to compare with (the cam recording adds so much noise itself that you won't be able to tell the difference between a mark and trash frequencies), while with blu-rays there obviously is.

I'm pretty sure you'll be able to reliably detect the watermark in any chunk of a few seconds length taken out of the audio stream.



Totally agreed. They could have gone on doing that for ages to come. But now, after introducing it to blu-rays, they've drawn so much attention to this protection, that it will probably not survive a year....



So far I have only seen mentionings of the Pioneer BDP-V6000 having the detection on board. No actual confirmations so far.

Thanks, Peer. Good information as always. :) It's interesting to note that the PS3 at least seems to detect it faster and faster each time. For instance, on the original BD-RE I made yesterday, it took 20 minutes, 3 seconds to show the error and mute the audio. On subsequent backup attempts, and even my attempt at bitstreaming the DTS core, it took a little over 19 minutes to show the error and mute the audio. It's been suggested that the PS3 has some kind of cache but I don't really know.

[SamuriHL]

Whoever it was that asked me to make an MP4, I did so last night and streamed it a few minutes ago. AAC stereo audio converted from the DTS-HD MA track. (And in fact, I had run it through MakeMKV first to convert it to a MKV before the MP4 conversion). Detected Cinavia in a little over 19 minutes as I said in my last post. Audio re-encoding will not help, as we already knew. At least I was able to confirm it. I have one more thing I want to try and then I'll be done playing with this foolish protection for now. It's been a fun little experiment, though.

[nurbs]

Thanks. I thought maybe it won't check in all media, but then again that would make the watermark kind of pointless.

[kypec]

AAC stereo audio converted from the DTS-HD MA track
Does that mean that watermark signal remains there even when original multi-channel audio has been normalized and/or downmixed to stereo? Very effective technique I would say...
:thanks: for your experiments

[SamuriHL]

Yup, that's exactly what it means. No matter how you re-encode it, the watermark is still embedded into the signal. From a technical standpoint I'm actually kind of impressed. From a wanting to backup my collection of movies standpoint, not so much. :D

[laserfan]

From a technical standpoint I'm actually kind of impressed.You've described this protection countless times as "stupid", and (most often) "foolish". When are you going to change to "clever", "brilliant", "impenetrable", "unstoppable"...? ;)

[SamuriHL]

You've described this protection countless times as "stupid", and (most often) "foolish". When are you going to change to "clever", "brilliant", "impenetrable", "unstoppable"...? ;)

ROFLMAO! When I refer to it as stupid and foolish it's as an end user that wants to backup their library. :) Again, from a purely technical standpoint, it is pretty impressive. The signal is embedded in such a way that it resists all re-encoding and even analog recording. And in theory, at least, this signal is inaudible. (The jury's out on that one and I'm not even going to TRY to debate it. The purists would crucify me if I even tried.) That's not a small accomplishment, really. However, as an end user, it's stupid and foolish. :D

[laserfan]

ROFLMAO!Glad you took my comment as the joke that it was (I was smiling as I typed it).

I wonder about one thing that I don't think has been discussed--how does a company like Oppo get away with not including such stuff (Cinavia or I think even AACS) in their players? I thought they signed-on with the Sony Gestapo and had to follow all their rulez.

[SamuriHL]

Oppo definitely supports AACS. Their BD player is pre-Cinavia vintage afaik, so, unless they can update it with a firmware to support Cinavia, there's nothing they can do. I suspect a LOT of existing players are going to be in the same boat. If it's possible to update with a firmware, then they'll be required to at some point. The AACS LA is requiring all new players to support it. That means TMT/PDVD/WinDVD will all have to support it at some point, too. Good times.

[kypec]

Yup, that's exactly what it means. No matter how you re-encode it, the watermark is still embedded into the signal. From a technical standpoint I'm actually kind of impressed. From a wanting to backup my collection of movies standpoint, not so much. :D
What about applying some strong low-pass filter, let's say <15kHz?
I know such manipulation have no real use for typical end users (read audiophiles) but I'm just being curious for the sake of it.:rolleyes: