Redfox (AnyDVD et all) appears to be gone

[kurkosdr]

VideoHelp is plagued by ghost users who reply "xyzFab" to random question, even users register to just recommend DVDFab before disappearing in oblivion. Their infomercial practices are definitely real.
Sure, but the guy in the RedFox forums sounded genuinely frustrated, in a way that's hard for your average DVDFab shill to replicate (especially if they are an ESL speaker from China).

But anyway, my point is, no tool is guaranteed to work with every disc.

[DaveO88]

How could it be otherwise, since no software, no matter how good, can handle structural errors such as pressing errors or other errors that occur during production

[coopervid]

How could it be otherwise, since no software, no matter how good, can handle structural errors such as pressing errors or other errors that occur during production
Hi Buddy! Read my PM.

[hajj_3]

updated versions of clonebd, clonedvd and virtual clonedrive have been released: https://www.elby.ch/products/clonebd.html

[walstib]

Question about XReveal and playlist obfuscation (largely Lionsgate): for full backups to Folder, MakeMKV doesn’t “fix” this problem. AnyDVD did. And it appears that DVDFab does as well. Curious if xreveal does? So locating the appropriate playlist (.mpls) doesn’t help as I do full backups. I would assume that AnyDVD and DVDFab modify some java class file and/or removed/change some other file(s) to fix this.

EDIT:

Testing this now w/XReveal Pro (figured in any case, $45 to support a good cause is worth it) - testing on The Hunger Games BD which from MakeMKV full disc bacup throws up the copyright thing around the 8 min mark.

Will also test DVDFab to see if they deal with it (they dealt with John Wick just fine, so fingers crossed...)


EDIT 2:

XReveal Pro removed ScreenPass/Playlist Obfuscation for The Hunger Games :) Excellent!

[DrinkLyeAndDie]

updated versions of clonebd, clonedvd and virtual clonedrive have been released: https://www.elby.ch/products/clonebd.html

Merely a security update although CloneDVD has a nebulous "Some minor changes and improvements" line in the changelog.

On one hand this is a good sign that Elby updated the software but on the other hand I figured they were long dead and buried already. No real releases in forever even before RedFox ceased to exist. No CloneBD update in over a year and the previous update was a beta with the last official release dating back to 2022. No CloneDVD update in 5 years. No Virtual CloneDrive in 5 years.

[SamuriHL]

And yes CloneBD still can't beat MakeMKV for handling Dolby Vision titles...

[coopervid]

And yes CloneBD still can't beat MakeMKV for handling Dolby Vision titles...

I think CloneBD is still a great program if you want to just rip the main movie to folder or ISO or if you want / need to compress the video. Sadly their original developers are not with the company anymore and the new guys just lack knowledge to modernize or upgrade the software. In addition the market for CloneBD has shrunk since more and more people don't burn discs anymore and store on hard disks. Furthermore the company is working mainly on other projects which are more profitable. I tested their latest beta and it was truly a mess. Finally Redfox removed all Elby software links from its site because they were also frustrated. This happened shortly before Redfox ceased to exist.

[SamuriHL]

Yea, it's a shame because I truly loved CloneBD and really waned it to succeed. After years of asking for one feature that they continuously failed to deliver, I gave up even trying. I shared Redfox's frustration even though I believe the core technology they had was superior to anything else on the market. They just couldn't deliver a finished product, unfortunately.

[kurkosdr]

Furthermore the company is working mainly on other projects which are more profitable.
What other projects? AFAIK, all their paid software is CloneDVD and CloneBD and they haven't announced any upcoming products.

[kurkosdr]

And yes CloneBD still can't beat MakeMKV for handling Dolby Vision titles...
Can you elaborate? Haven't edited any UHD BDs yet, so I am curious.

[SamuriHL]

Can you elaborate? Haven't edited any UHD BDs yet, so I am curious.

It's a very specific use case. I want Dolby Vision in MKV container and CloneBD can't handle that. MakeMKV does. As do other tools. But unfortunately CloneBD could never get it right. As it's a VERY big use case for me, it prevented my continued use of CloneBD as my go to backup solution.

[coopervid]

What other projects? AFAIK, all their paid software is CloneDVD and CloneBD and they haven't announced any upcoming products.

Nothing related to discs. Completely other areas where their guys are now concentrate on.

[kurkosdr]

Nothing related to discs. Completely other areas where their guys are now concentrate on.
Like what areas?

[coopervid]

Like what areas?

I don't know and I don't care. Why do you?

[Revolutrix]

It's nice that the Redfox forum is still represented. I was always helped a lot there. Anydvd still runs flawlessly, with new database from here.

[kurkosdr]

It's nice that the Redfox forum is still represented. I was always helped a lot there. Anydvd still runs flawlessly, with new database from here.
Huh? How is it represented? It closed down. Do you mean that some people from RedFox forums happen to be here?

[kurkosdr]

I don't know and I don't care. Why do you?
Then how do you know they are working mainly on other projects which are more profitable?

[coopervid]

Then how do you know they are working mainly on other projects which are more profitable?

The former Redfox admin told me.

[kitahoshi]

Thank you for the speedy reply.

That is a real shame that those images files were never saved to a backup drive.

There are 34 PNG images there. If you are thinking about recreating the guide, it will be an enormous task and quite time consuming.

In the meantime, at the RedFox thread, the Pioneer tools on the Pioneer webpage directed me to the firmware update for my Pioneer. I have never updated the firmware on this drive and will give it a go to see if it corrects BD-R DL discs. I'll keep you posted.

Hi, I happened to find this post and recall that exact guide you are referencing.

I found it useful at the time and saved it with an html page capture tool. It has the full thread and all images. I'm not sure how to upload it here, so instead here are images of the file.


https://i.imgur.com/tgEyE66.png
https://i.imgur.com/V7rRn8p.png
https://i.imgur.com/TLGhR3E.png
https://i.imgur.com/75IjF2K.png
https://i.imgur.com/p5juQyg.png
https://i.imgur.com/ns0ATXY.png
https://i.imgur.com/lopjQHn.png
https://i.imgur.com/XRl53vm.png
https://i.imgur.com/A8Lsteg.png
https://i.imgur.com/hiy6GtK.png
https://i.imgur.com/WEcLCgB.png
https://i.imgur.com/Gn6Ueti.png
https://i.imgur.com/gZQlugM.png
https://i.imgur.com/M3DAQOy.png
https://i.imgur.com/jPWIsRr.png
https://i.imgur.com/J9ivu5D.png

[cartman0208]

I think I never had to scroll so much for a single post :D :goodpost:

[spotter]

I'm a little surprised no one has leaked a lifetime key for anydvd, its not like they are coming back and the key would be banned in future releases . Their java rewriting was 2nd to none and would be useful for older discs.

It be cute if one could combine anydvd with makemkv to 1) generate the VUK (and have it inserted into a place AnyDVD can use) 2) created a protected ISO (i.e. encrypted with the VUK, but not bus encryption). and then use anydvd to decrypt the iso (I've done this many times, so I know it works for blurays, doesn't work for DVDs). I even had situations where i was the first user to ever decrypt the bluray with anydvd, so when I first went to decrypt the ISO it failed (as need disc in drive to calculate VUK), but if I inserted the disc into the drive, it calculated the VUK, cached it, and then was able to decrypt with the ISO (and you might ask, why go iso if I could decrypt directly from optical image, 1. it was faster 2. sometimes optical images were scratched and the way I got a good image was by using ddrescue on multiple copies of the optical disc).

[SamuriHL]

Not realistic unfortunately. Yes, they could generate a VUK for blu-ray back when they were active because they constantly updated the AACS 1.0 host cert and device/processing key required to do so. As of now, there is no known public host cert for AACS 1.0 MKB v82, so AnyDVD has passed its usefulness from that perspective. AnyDVD doesn't use KeyDB for blu-ray.

None of that was true for UHD as they relied on KeyDB entries in the end. Before that they had other methods for getting keys but it was not something they generated themselves as they didn't have an AACS 2.x device/processing key of their own. We'll leave it at that.

[spotter]

I mean, didn't anydvd work offline to calculate VUKs and store them locally (as in the example I gave of it not being able to decrypt an iso I created until I loaded the disc and had it scan it). If that's the case, it had to have the ability to store VUKs locally, even if not a normal keydb mechanism. Unless I'm wrong and it wasn't offline?

I know for bd+ it required it to be online, but I thought for regular blu-ray aacs it didn't.

It they have a keydb equivalent locally, one would just have to reverse engineer it. I wonder how it would behave with optical disks if it already had the VUK. Presumably even in those cases not having a current mkb key, it should still be able to decrypt the disc (should vs could, even if it should be able to, doesn't mean it can, because it might have not seen the point to rely on a VUK database only code path when it knows it can always calculate the VUK)

[SamuriHL]

No, it wasn't offline. It uploaded the data to their server which then returned the key. They weren't stupid enough to expose their device keys and host certs to end users. (EDIT to clarify: They did download and cache all known blu-ray keys with each new version of AnyDVD, which is why you probably think it worked "offline")

The key database AnyDVD used was already reverse engineered. But who cares? Why would you need/want it? It's highly outdated at this point. Anything that's in it can already be generated with other tools. E.G. there's a perfectly capable public device key for MKB v82. Use LibreDrive to bypass bus encryption and off you go, generating your own KeyDB entries.

I really don't understand the insistence on sticking with something that is completely and totally dead. Yes, it USED to handle screen pass better than anything else, but that's also because they actively updated it to handle new versions. No one's updating that anymore.

AnyDVD is NOT a viable program going forward.

[spotter]

As a simple example. For PBS BRs, they really weren't java BRs, even they used a screenpass like protection. The menus were basically just HDMV, what they did with java (and they used GBs of junk data to do it), was simply setup a handful of GPRs that contained the correct playlist for each episode. What this meant, after you ran it through anydvd, you could actually delete the junk java data as the jar would never be used as anydvd totally bypassed it. I haven't seen anyone else do that.

I think you think I'm talking about "new" BRs and using AnyDVD for them. I'm talking about using it for historical BRs that it did better on than existing programs today (as well as for BRs that don't have screenpass like protections).

[RetsimLegin]

Unless anyone can convince me otherwise (or unless I fall into a "hole" - which I haven't yet) I would suggest AnyDVD HD users simply switch over to XReveal plus an up to date KEYDB.cfg (for the free version; Pro [paid] users don't need this).

https://www.xreveal.com/
http://fvonline-db.bplaced.net/

[spotter]

the main thing that prevents me from moving to xreveal is that I don't believe I can't test its screenpass support at all (i.e. with anydvd I was able to test that).

Without screenpass support (and the resulting java support). I don't see much value in it. Non java blurays are easy to handle with makemkv (perhaps with a run through bdedit to redo PSR20 usage). Java BluRays with region coding one can either ignore (as long as your player is set to the correct region or can change it easily enough), or many times don't even define the region in the java code itself, but in properties file that are easy to edit with any text editor and therefore make region free). The primary thing I value then for my personal use is handling playlist obfuscation and unless I'm wrong, that's not something free users can ever test for themselves? (with that said, later today I'll experiment for myself and see).

[SeeMoreDigital]

@spotter,

Are you backing up and playing the entire disc? Personally I only back-up the main movie which can easily be re-muxed into a blu-ray compatible .iso file using TSmuxer GUI. And if there's anything interesting to see on the rest of the disc I'll back it up separately as an .mkv file...

[SamuriHL]

the main thing that prevents me from moving to xreveal is that I don't believe I can't test its screenpass support at all (i.e. with anydvd I was able to test that).

Without screenpass support (and the resulting java support). I don't see much value in it. Non java blurays are easy to handle with makemkv (perhaps with a run through bdedit to redo PSR20 usage). Java BluRays with region coding one can either ignore (as long as your player is set to the correct region or can change it easily enough), or many times don't even define the region in the java code itself, but in properties file that are easy to edit with any text editor and therefore make region free). The primary thing I value then for my personal use is handling playlist obfuscation and unless I'm wrong, that's not something free users can ever test for themselves? (with that said, later today I'll experiment for myself and see).

It's right there in the change log for the latest version:


Improved ScreenPass support


My recommendation since Redfox went away has been to use XReveal. The author is very good and very responsive if you have issues. It's worth supporting his work as it's a very reasonable cost.

[SamuriHL]

Unless anyone can convince me otherwise (or unless I fall into a "hole" - which I haven't yet) I would suggest AnyDVD HD users simply switch over to XReveal plus an up to date KEYDB.cfg (for the free version; Pro [paid] users don't need this).

https://www.xreveal.com/
http://fvonline-db.bplaced.net/

No reason to convince you otherwise. This is the right approach. The paid version does all the work for you. Highly recommended.

[spotter]

@spotter,

Are you backing up and playing the entire disc? Personally I only back-up the main movie which can easily be re-muxed into a blu-ray compatible .iso file using TSmuxer GUI. And if there's anything interesting to see on the rest of the disc I'll back it up separately as an .mkv file...

Both, though in practice for personal use I've mostly moved to MKVs.

It's right there in the change log for the latest version:

yes, but how well it works is the Q for me

My recommendation since Redfox went away has been to use XReveal. The author is very good and very responsive if you have issues. It's worth supporting his work as it's a very reasonable cost..

I'm going to experiment with it, dont' get me wrong, I just dont want to sink money into it, if its somewhat of a downgrade (in ways that matter to me) over AnyDVD, In practice, what I need it for (right now), is recovering from a data loss and doing reripping from cold storage disc archive, and I'm somewhat sad if I can't rip them as well as i used to.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Both, though in practice for personal use I've mostly moved to MKVs.

So... What has Java got to do with anything?

[infoxtreme]

No reason to convince you otherwise. This is the right approach. The paid version does all the work for you. Highly recommended.

I'm a longtime SlySoft > Redfox user, a fan of AnyDVD and its products. Then for 4K discs, I switched to Makemkv (I thought LibreDrive was amazing), and after AnyDVD's demise, I switched to DVDFab and its products.

For 4K discs, I honestly don't see anything better than Makemkv, my opinion.
For Blu-ray, DVDs, and streaming, DVDFab is serving me well (I honestly don't like their support), but the programs work and, having been on the market for so long, seem reliable.

I haven't bought a lifetime license for XReveal yet, not even because of the price, which is really low, but it's almost identical to AnyDVD. When I saw it, I was expecting some Redfox ad, now it's XReveal, lol.

[SamuriHL]

I'm a longtime SlySoft > Redfox user, a fan of AnyDVD and its products. Then for 4K discs, I switched to Makemkv (I thought LibreDrive was amazing), and after AnyDVD's demise, I switched to DVDFab and its products.


I bought a MakeMKV license very close to the beginning. DVDFab products I bought after the demise of Slysoft as insurance.


For 4K discs, I honestly don't see anything better than Makemkv, my opinion.
For Blu-ray, DVDs, and streaming, DVDFab is serving me well (I honestly don't like their support), but the programs work and, having been on the market for so long, seem reliable.


It depends on the use case. If you want real time decryption, XReveal is the way to go. If all you're doing is backing up MKV's to your NAS, MakeMKV is enough. My workflow falls into the latter category as I'm watching all my movies on an Ugoos for Dolby Vision these days. But XReveal has its place for when MakeMKV doesn't natively support a title and the VUK isn't yet known in the KeyDB.


I haven't bought a lifetime license for XReveal yet, not even because of the price, which is really low, but it's almost identical to AnyDVD. When I saw it, I was expecting some Redfox ad, now it's XReveal, lol.

It's clear the author of XReveal was inspired by AnyDVD. But afaik there was no association between them. They work fundamentally different. AnyDVD provided keys in an internal database (or for UHD an online only database). XReveal does not. It's a bring your own keydb kind of situation.

[SamuriHL]

yes, but how well it works is the Q for me


If only there were some way to find out.... ;)

I'm going to experiment with it, dont' get me wrong, I just dont want to sink money into it, if its somewhat of a downgrade (in ways that matter to me) over AnyDVD, In practice, what I need it for (right now), is recovering from a data loss and doing reripping from cold storage disc archive, and I'm somewhat sad if I can't rip them as well as i used to.

We're not talking about a lot of money here. For the cost of a movie you have a license. I get that you're re-ripping old titles now and for that particular use case AnyDVD may or may not be fine.

But here's the big problem...Once the host cert that AnyDVD uses for blu-ray is revoked in an MKB, once your drive sees that MKB version, AnyDVD stops working. It'll work fine for UHD's that have a keydb entry because it uses LibreDrive for UHD support. But IIRC, they opted to use their own host cert for blu-ray support which means as soon as the host cert is revoked, it'll no longer work on blu-rays with bus encryption. That's not all of them by any means. But as you're ripping through all your old discs, if that host cert is revoked and the disc supports bus encryption, it'll fail. And you won't necessarily know why. That seems like a huge waste of time to me. But it's your time to waste I guess.

[spotter]

dumped $45 on xreveal, it doesn't handle screenpass nicely for PBS blurays.

It might play correctly (cursory check seemed to indicate it was fine), but it doesn't remove the java code nor displayed the correct playlists.

[SamuriHL]

Email the author and work with him. He may be able to improve it to your liking. He might not but he's very responsive and it's worth opening that dialog.

[spotter]

Submitted a dump with my feedback. Might follow up in a few days

[SamuriHL]

Awesome. Hopefully he's able to do something to improve it for you. The work around for bus encrypted blu-rays in the meantime for you is this:

Rip to protected ISO with XReveal
Mount the protected ISO with whatever (Virtual CloneDrive, Daemon Tools, or my new favorite ImgDrive)
Use AnyDVD to rip it screenpass free

Just remember that this is only going to help you process your older titles. And is only (potentially) needed for bus encrypted discs. Non-bus encrypted discs can always be processed as long as you have the keys.

P.S. I personally recommend using CloneBD if you're keeping the full disc structure. That should clean it up.

[coopervid]

Sam, I agree 100%. The only question I have: Why rip to protected ISO instead of decrypted ISO?

[spotter]

Would work if I had a valid copy of anydvd at the moment, which I don't anymore (hence my surprise/sadness that no one had leaked a key).

But yes, I used to create bus unencrypted copies with my ddrescue method of imaging multiple discs by using makemkv to instantiate libredrive first.

[spotter]

Sam, I agree 100%. The only question I have: Why rip to protected ISO instead of decrypted ISO?

I'm not sure anydvd will java deprotect a disc that is decrypted (might not even be able to correctly as the protections could depend on the encrypted contents on disc)

[SamuriHL]

Sam, I agree 100%. The only question I have: Why rip to protected ISO instead of decrypted ISO?

How do you propose to fix screenpass on an unprotected ISO???

[SamuriHL]

I'm not sure anydvd will java deprotect a disc that is decrypted (might not even be able to correctly as the protections could depend on the encrypted contents on disc)

Correct, it can't. This is exactly right.

[coopervid]

How do you propose to fix screenpass on an unprotected ISO???
Interesting. I have never come across any screenpass problems playing decrypted ISOs on my Oppo clone.

[SamuriHL]

Interesting. I have never come across any screenpass problems playing decrypted ISOs on my Oppo clone.

Were they decrypted, oh, I don't know, just spitballing here, BY ANYDVD???? lol

[coopervid]

Were they decrypted, oh, I don't know, just spitballing here, BY ANYDVD???? lol

Yes. In the past always by AnyDVD. I'm now using XReveal and had no such issues since.

[SamuriHL]

Yes. In the past always by AnyDVD. I'm now using XReveal and had no such issues since.

Then you understand the point and why it (luckily) worked for you. The ONLY way to make an unprotected ISO of a screen pass title that actually works is with something that fixes the java on the disc to bypass screen pass when the disc is unprotected. The whole point of screen pass, from what I understand which is to say very little, is that it runs java commands before the disc is decrypted to ensure the integrity of the disc. IOW, it's like following a map to the correct playlist but the map can only be navigated on the correct trail (i.e. the aacs encrypted trail with all protection in place). The minute you decrypt the disc, if the screen pass isn't patched correctly, that decrypted ISO is pretty much useless. AnyDVD also added a disc.inf to the disc to let certain players that knew about it what playlist to actually use. ;)

XReveal does handle screen pass. It just may not be quite as robust as AnyDVD was at the moment.

[spotter]

random thought. VLC probably handles screenpass correctly for an encrypted DVD when it has the vuk in its local keydb (well, assuming libbluray's java support is sufficient, which many times it isn't, have run into many blurays that don't work and it seems development is dead on it).

less random thought, for my PBS bluray case, it does seem like Xreveal handles it fine, but less because its doing anything very screen pass like specific (i.e. it doesn't seem to know this is an obfuscated playlist bluray), just that it can handle it like any other java disc with a few shims and then the java code does the right thing to setup the GPRs and then never runs again.

However, since the hdmv code is a) relatively simple b) libbluray provides the ability to trace all the opcodes executed by the HDMV vm, I was able to manually duplicate what anydvd did automatically, by seeing what GPRs the java code changed (due to different paths it went down before and after executing the java code) and what playlist is played (which it got out of 3 GPRs depending on the episode being played). It be interesting if it was possible to do something similar with java code, but I doubt it is. This would be then an easy way to figure out playlists (if my random thought above is correct), just don't deprotect the content, just provide the VUK to vlc, have it decrupt the m2ts files as needed and just record what playlists are played.

so I just replaced the java title on the bluray with bdedit with my own title that set up the 5 needed GPRs appropriately and then like the java code, just jumped back to first play playlist (title -1/65535), just like the java code did, and it worked. able to excise the junk java data and it all works perfectly.

as a total aside, for those who remember the old sigma based player (neotv, dune et al), they had a major bug that never got fixed with blurays that did the above (jump back to first play title). Any BluRay that did that (such as these PBS blurays or very common for BD+ blurays), the player would just hang and die when that happened. I tried to convince AnyDVD devs to have a checkbox to duplicate the first play title and have any jumps to it (be it in java or hdmv code) to instead jump to the alternate duplicate title. i don't think they ever did it because they didn't view it as their job to fix buggy players, though at one point those sigma based players were very common (I still have my dune and neotv sitting in storage, long ago replaced by the clone oppo which didn't have any of these problems).