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MillimeterCopy Protection for Your DVDs, Part 1
Feb 8, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Figure 2. Click the "Do you want to use VideoWrite?" checkbox, and that's it.
Implementation of VideoWrite is simple: Just use the checkbox in the Microboards software application, as shown in Figure 2. When you check the "Do you want to use VideoWrite?" checkbox, so long as you have the necessary credits, the software will copy-protect your DVDs. Microboards sells credits on a sliding scale, with 100 credits costing $225, 500 costing $625, 1,000 costing $1,000, and 5,000 costing $3,750.
Figure 3. The original and the protected ISO images.
Operationally, the software reads in the ISO image file and then creates a new image file that it actually burns to disc. That creates two issues: hard-disk space for the new file and, more importantly, space on the DVD. As you can see in Figure 3, the protected coppelia.iso file is about 184MB larger than the original ISO, so if your original ISO barely fit on the DVD, the copy-protected file would be too large. I typically don't like to burn DVDs with more than 4.2GB anyway, since many DVD players seem to have trouble reading data on the edge, so I'd want to adjust my ISO size down even further.
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Once the protected ISO is ready, it's business as usual for the MX-2: Just load the discs and set the number of copies.
So what do you care about when considering technology like this? First, that it plays where you want it to play, and second, that it's not easily crackable. On the first front, Microboards asserts that VideoWrite has been tested for playback compatibility and is found to work with 99.88 percent of the U.S. install base of DVD players. The protected Coppélia DVD I made (killer second act, by the way) played on all the DVD players in my home and office—set-top and computer (Mac and Windows)—which was a small but obviously important sample to me.
On the crackable front, I'll give the DVD to a technologically savvy miscreant who will attempt to crack the protection with his suite of illegal DVD-ripping tools and who will (anonymously) write about his results. I'll duplicate his efforts on legal DVD-ripping tools that I have here (that don't attempt to crack any copy protection schemes), such as Roxio Creator and Toast, HandBrake, and several others. I hope these won't be able to crack the DVD, but you never know until you test. I'll also see if I can track down a case study or two of actual users of the Fortium technology to get their view from the field.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.