Protecting a DVD to prevent copying?

Question

I've been asked to film and edit a performance by a local dramatic society and put it onto DVD; the agreement is they will buy the DVDs for about £10 each. What can I do to stop them being copyable? How can I prevent one person buying the DVD, making fifty copies, and selling or giving them to the other members?

Answer 1

Well, there are many ways, actually, to protect your dvd's from being copied, although they do not come cheap. For a start, you will need a good authoring software capable of marking you dvd as copyrighted, such as Sonic Scenarist or Sony DVD Architect. the latter being the easiest, you will find on both of them several protection schemes: You will find a menu to set CGMS (Copy generations) to unlimited copies, one copy, or none copies at all. If you select none, you will have acces to additional protection levels. The Macrovision content protection system, for example, lets you specify 3 levels of signal scrambling, which will work when they try to record your video signal to another device. Recording devices such as VCR's or DVDVR's cannot find a stable color, video, or luminance signal to sync to, thus the recorded material won't show properly. In fact, if you use macrovision protection, your clients will have to hook their dvd players directly to their TV set, or else they will get a distorted and poor picture. But your dvd can still be copied using a regular PC, so we come across the second protection protocol, which the big studios use (they use both, one of top of the other, actually), and is calles CSS or Content Scrambling System. You can set a CSS flag on your mastered DVD before taking it to a replication facility. In there, they will create a glass master from which they will press several copies of you material, (often 1000+, but there are some replicators who can press between 10-500 units if you ask them to) which will include a "key" embedded on the disc surface, wich will be needed for the disc player to decrypt the material on it. CSS scrambled discs cannot be copied by dragging files on a personal computer, and are the type of disc you can find at retailers stores. But you must know they can still be copied if you have the needed software ripping and reauthoring tools. And they're easily found on the web, and for free!
What can you actually do to prevent illegal copying of your material? There is a way for us, to at least make ir harder for the casual disc copier.
First, you should try the Macrovision system set at level 3, so they cannot copy it using the video signal directly.
Second, try to compress your material at the highest bitrate possible. You will get the highest image quality this way, also. If your material is long enough, and I hope it is, you will end up with more than the standard 4.3Gb available on a standard dvd-r or dvd+r. So it wont fit on a standard DVD. right?
Now burn your material using the newer, double-layered DVD+RDL or DVD-RDL, which hold more than 8.5Gb. The discs can still be copied, but their price and the hassle involved will turn down most of the casual DVD cloners out there.
This way, you could also skip the Macrovision system, as people is not dubbing to VHS these days. But it doesn't hurt to use it.

Now a word of advice:

Instead of protecting your dvd's you should protect your work by fully charging for it first, and then you can sell very cheaply your dvd copies. If there is no sponsorship, however, then welcome to the independent family!

Good Luck and have some fun!

Answer 2

Yes and no. There are DVD authoring packages like Adobe Encore that will let you encrypt the DVD just like Hollywood. But you'll end up spending alot of $ on a technology that a quick google search can get around.

Your best bet would be your own personal "FBI warning screen" to let a person know if they bought an pirated copy, but even that can be removed.

Answer 3

Professional DVD's like the DVD factories use come with pirating protection already on them. I'm not sure if yours do but to check if they do burn one copy then close out everything. Insert the DVD then open my computer, right click on the DVD icon then, send to, then click My Documents. If it does not allow you to then it is protected and your fine, if not go to your local electronics retailer and pick up some anti-pirate DVD's. Hope this helps, Brodster

Answer 4

via backwards compatability with standalone DVD gamers, any DVD which could be performed could be copied. extremely some the time this suggests doing the backup on your laptop, because of the fact it is all based on the appliance to get around the replica risk-free practices. courses like "DVD cut back" will replica the traditional public of discs, with the added benefit of encoding them to in good condition on a non twin-layer disc. If DVD cut back can no longer beat the risk-free practices, you could attempt "DVD Decoder" or different comparable products. enable me merely tension that it relatively is seen honest Use to back up discs which you very own. you ought to on no account use those courses to pirate DVDs.

Answer 5

Hi, im not sure on this one...........but have been told if you post it to yourself through a proper post office and dont undo it............. its how you copyright it. not sure how true that is tho