Okay I have a copy of Dave Tippers Surrounded and I was wondering how I could copy and convert the DVD-Audio part (NOT THE ONE IN THE VIDEO_TS THE REAL DVD-AUDIO PART, I already know how to extract ac3 from vob and convert it!).
Also it seems to have some copy protection called MMCP or something like that, is there a way to get rid of that ?
note: if i asked something stupid, or asked something wrong please don't flame me, as I'm totaly new to DVD-Audio!

If you succeed at ripping it, please let us know.

There is currently no way to digitally rip DVD-Audio. The only thing you can do is run the analog outs of your DVD-Audio player to your soundcard and record it.

What Cyaneyes said. The DVD Audio part is heavily encrypted, as well as encoded into a format that no (source-free) utility can play back so far.

Your best bet is to rip the ac3/dts part from the video_ts part, if any is included.

If it's possible to burn DVD Audio, how come we can't rip it back off? Or do domestic DVD burners not write data in the same format as commercial ones are done?

You can burn non-encrypted dvd-audio (the encryption is optional).

It's CPPM. And that's the tricky part.

You can also digitally record it with some modified DVD-A players, which are not cheap. I remember seeing another thread about this here a while ago.

So if it's at least possible to encrypt using available software, does that mean in the future someone can work out a way to make it possible to unencrypt commercial discs?

No, that does not mean unencryption will be possible.

In my opinion, unencrypting of CPPM should not happen. Nowadays, there is the SACD versus DVD-Audio race. My vote is for DVD-Audio. If unencyption of commercial DVD-Audio discs would be possible, the big music labels would not prefer no more the DVD-Audio format, and SACD would get the preference.
So in order to spread DVD-Audio format, it's better to not unencrypt DVD-Audio.

There's two layers of encryption. The encryption uses a media key block to authenticate the player, which itself is encrypted. The MKB is decrypted using a unique key individual to the player, and compromised keys can be disabled from decrypting future releases, rendering the audio player completely useless.

The only known way to decrpyt the MKB without a throwaway key is brute force, which apart from being incredibly time consuming would have to have a mechanism to detect when the MKB had been correctly decrypted. I believe they've also started using digital watermarking on some releases.

They should just ditch both formats, IMHO, I would like to see music distributed as files, on any chosen media, not just on dvds or cds.

AtW

A record executive's worst nightmare. You have to remember that most of the people this type of protection is pitched to don't actually know a lot about technology. Business is their game.

If an analyst with a shiny PhD shows you some positive looking statistics and tells you how effective this new protection is at reducing piracy, you're probably going to agree to it unless it's obscenely expensive to implement. If you went into a major record label and proposed an internet distributed format with no protection you'd get shot down the minute you walked into the boardroom.

What they don't seem to realise is the vast majority of people who download music aren't concerned with fidelity. No matter what protection you put on a disc it will be able to be reproduced somehow, even if only by analogue recording. Yes, you will lose quality but as I said to most downloaders this isn't an issue. The end result is the majority of protection schemes do little to reduce piracy but inconvenience those of us who actually pay for our music.

At least on SACD you can rip the Redbook CD layer. I am perfectly happy for consumers to not be able to rip and share hi-res content. The record company is never going to turn around and say 'here, have a master quality copy of our album to share with all your mates'. It's not as if an analogue rip of a DVD-A isn't good enough to shove on your mp3 player of choice...

I have all my music on my computer, not just my mp3-player, what if you want to have good quality and not use the damn discs all the time? As a consumer i would like the freedom of having the music on my media of choiche. To be frank, i think the industry is just alianating more consumers by making origianl products so restrictive. (why am i forced to see a stupid anti-piracy ad on my ORIGINAL dvd, when it's sure to be removed on the copy, for example).

But I guess they won't listen to me

AtW

Or even "here, we won't put ineffective protection methods on our media so you can listen to high fidelity audio without switching discs every 10 minutes". A man can dream.

I see no end to the SACD vs DVDA war.
This will confuse consumers and ultimately the industry loses.


Unless if Sony refuses to license SACD to the pornographic music industry.
(that was a Beta joke)

Forgive the potentially stupid question, but... how about using an optical cable, connect the optical-out of the DVD-A player to the optical-in of something else, and record that? Would that not be lossless?
The only thing is, I haven't played aroudn with this for long enough to guess whether the recording will include, say, all channels of the DVD-A or whether you'll just end up with Stereo sound.
Any thoughts?

buying DVD-audio = "i dont need portability"

Keep that in mind when you buy a DVD-audio the next time.

Of course - if the album/video is at least a bit popular.... there are those unnamable ways to get an unprotected copy, so that you can play it on other devices as well. It doesn't really matter which method you choose, because practicing fair-use in this case would be illegal anways.

And concerning the music/movie-*industry* - who cares? They're obsolete and to the disadvantage of the consumers and content-creators anways.

I believe that there is something in the DVD-A spec that prevents it from being output digitally, so that wouldn't really work.

That's true for SACD, but not DVD-A, IIRC. I briefly played around with a Pioneer 578a "universal" player and remember it being able to output DVD-A through the S/PDIF, though in stereo and at a 48kHz sampling rate. SACD won't give you any digital connections, period (which sort of makes the whole argument over its supposed "higher resolution" seem kind of funny!).

there's one thing I've always wondered about. If a regular DVD player everyone can buy in stores has a decryption key, why hasn't someone found a method yet to extract one of those keys and make it available for everyone. Maybe they could even find the algorithm to generate new keys...because I doubt that every DVD player has an unique key, which is stored on every DVD. I guess they just use a bunch of master keys...

Also, are computer DVD drives able to play DVD Audio? If that's the case what prevents someone from capturing the stream, kinda what they do with DRM protected files. However, since DVD-Audio is lossless you won't loose any quality in opposite to most DRM protected files...

ANd here's another thing: if that method is so effective why aren't all DVD's encrypted then? It wouldn't people prevent from burning DVD's but they could stop people from sharing ripped stuff...

The vast majority of commercial DVD's ARE encrypted, but unlike DVD-Video, DVD-A's encryption system is newer and has yet to be cracked. DVD-Video uses relatively weak 40-bit CSS encryption, and was cracked in 1999 or so, which delayed the launch of DVD-A. The industry, seeing that the DVD-video system had already been cracked, choose to use a newer system (CCPM) that still hasn't been defeated. The only way to "copy" a DVD-A is to capture it at a lower sampling rate in realtime, or in analog.

Moral of the story: unless you plan on never listening to a particular recording outside of your living room, don't buy DVD-A or SACD. Aside from the often-gimmicky multichannel capabilities, I've yet to see any compelling evidence that they do anything better than the plain-old CD's we've had laying around for twenty years.

SACD vs. DVD-Audio is a race that nobody cares about. Remember that LPs outsell SACD and DVD-Audio COMBINED in 2005. They are both technically somewhat interesting and commercially a bad joke. I really doubt that merely unencrypting either format can save them from the DAT/8-track/DCC/Elcasette dustbin of audio debacles.

Is there a way to rip unencrypted DVD-A then?

Yes, DVD Audio discs can be played on DVD drives. The drive itself doesn't matter. Which is matter is the playing software. As far as I know, currently PowerDVD 6 and WinDVD 6 is able to play DVD Audio discs, however to play CPPM encrypted discs, a personal license key for CPPM or something similar is required, which can be purchased separately.

Though I never tried, I think unencypted DVD-Audio discs can be copied simply extracting to an ISO, and then burning that ISO. For example with DVD Decrypter with ISO Mode.

...which means that we might have seen the last global physical audio format: the CD. That's it. End of the physical media story. It's lossy stereo audio files from now on.

That would be quite sad, because multichannel, done well, is fantastic. Not that you find much fantastic multichannel on DVD-A! Also, only having lossy content available would be a great shame!


It would be interesting if some audiophile record companies could "make a go" of a dedicated high quality audio format. It would have to be based on DVD-V or DVD-A (or CD!), but without some of the red tape, and with much better use of multichannel than conventional 5.1.

You see, it's often said that audiophiles aren't a large enough number of people to support an audio format (so SACD and DVD-A are both doomed) - but surely there are enough people who care about quality to allow a niche product (that piggybacks on something mainstream) to survive? If it can be read, decoded, and played in a standard PC with a 2 or 3 of stereo sound cards, that's a good start!

Cheers,
David.

Just wondering, where is the decryption being done in standalone players? Surely it can't be integrated into the DAC? Because as long as it's being done before the data reaches the DAC all you need to do is:

- Find the signal and clock signal pins coming into the DAC
- Solder on a S/PDIF encoding chip and connector

and you have a player with an unrestricted S/PDIF out. While this obviously isn't something the average consumer is prepared to do, it's not exactly rocket science either - anyone with some electronics skills and an oscilloscope should be able to do it (although I guess you might need special soldering tools depending on the DAC's packaging, and perhaps they add extra-special tamper-proofing like a big sign above the DAC saying "this is not a DAC").

This doesn't defeat any watermarking, of course, but really - who cares? As far as I know, you can still pay cash at a music store, and nobody is going to ask for your name and address :-)

This just illustrates what I've always found to be the major problem with copy protection - the only ones who suffers from it are the consumers. With sufficient dedication, any protection can be removed. As soon as it's removed, any copies made are hassle-free, while the people who want to "do the right thing" have to jump through hoops to use the content they paid for in the way they want to - if they're able to at all.

Seriously - I have two copy-protected CDs which I've been forced to make copies of to be able to play them in my standalone DVD player. When you're selling a product which can be copied without hassle (it took me about 15 minutes in total) but refuses to play back - the purpose for which it was presumably intended - I think there's something seriously flawed with your business logic.

This has been done for a few specific DVD player models. The add-on board costs about $800.

But then how do you encode it with flac or wavpack or tta or whatever.

Extracting the sound to wav is somewhat difficult, there are specifications how DVD-Audio zone elements (AOB, SAMG, AMG, ASVS) contains the audio information. Check dvda-author software site for informations about burning DVD-Audio and specifications:
http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net/
At the moment I don't know any software which can extract wav from an unencrypted DVD-Audio.

Sound can just as well be multichannel and "non-lossy" (there is some loss of information anyway i guess, you aren't going to get unlimited sample-rate) without a physical media? Playing it on computers just makes it more felxible, 5.1 not good enough? release 7.1, all you need is a small software-upgrade (and new amp and speakers )

AtW

Yes, this method works although it's cost is rather prohibitive and I lack the skill to perform that kind of modification myself.


From a business point of view it isn't a terrible idea. These measures are relatively cheap to implement, and the "experts" who pitch them to the businessmen vastly overstate their effectiveness. Most of these businessmen don't realise how ineffective they are in practice. The average record executive thinks copy protection methods stop the pirates while not inconveniencing legitimate users, for the most part blissfully ignorant of the fact the opposite is true in reality.

Part of the blame lies squarely with these people for not researching the effectiveness of protection technologies, granted (getting independent advice from a non-academic is a good start). I personally feel part of the blame also lies with the "experts".

Hardly, since there's still Dolby Digital, DTS, etc. on the very popular DVD format, for multichannel. There's also DSP like Dolby Pro Logic II, which works for any stereo source and I find does a very nice job of turnign stereo into 'multichannel' for many tracks. And of course compression can be lossless (WMA Lossless, FLAC, Shorten, MLP etc) as a well as lossy.





http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Detai...px?NewsId=13391

While I agree that the 'superiority' fo DVD-A to Redbook for stereo playback is theoretical at best, FWIW, DVD-A fans aren't *totally* confined to home listening..if they drive an Acura RL.

I don't think 448kbps AC-3 5.1 is going to set the audiophile world alight, do you?



That's interesting - MLP can do a lot more than is currently realised in its DVD-A incarnation, so it could probably deliver lossless 24/192 9-channel 2nd order ambisonics on BlueRay if required and implemented. I wonder if they were mad enough to put that in the standard? I wonder if anyone will be mad enough to make a recording?

Still, that's probably a long way off. What I was thinking of was an audiophile standard that could build on DVD without requiring proprietary encoding.

Cheers,
David.

The audio market doesn't depend on setting the 'audiophile' world alight. And given some of the snake oil that *does* set the audiophile world alight, that's a good thing.

IMO 'audiophile' quality sound is already available on CD...just master the damn things right.

The Steinberg WaveLab 5 software can do it. But this is a costly package aimed at professionals.

Wouldn't it be possible to create a reader that sets a computer's DVD laser to the beginning of a disk and then forces it to read and record every single byte in sequential order without any intermediary interpretation? That way, a bit-for-bit perfect DVD/DVDA ISO could be achieved without any unnecessary copy protection gymnastics.

Or -- I'm sorry -- is copying the actual disk not an issue?

Although DVDA and SACD are indeed rather prohibitive at the moment, I doubt their anti-piracy schematics will last. Too many customers are already weaned on portable media, and record/movie companies will eventually be forced to either brainwash the masses into submission or accept piracy as an inevitability. Success will come to the format, perhaps through an Apple lawsuit, or perhaps through some enterprising indie label that releases a series of unencrypted DVDAs.

Ooh! Off-topic, but take a look at this: http://www.portabledvdstore.com/pandvdpa6por.html

HOHOHOHO!!!!

http://www.rarewares.org/

Now that's really cool!
Does it rip the MLP streams directly do the HD? In that case, is there any software capable of decoding MLP streams?

I'm not sure yet, but I suspect it also decodes the streams.

The only way to know for sure is testing it yourself

anyone had success in ripping DVD-A content with these programs, and if so, how?

The guy that suggested these tools to me told me he had success with them.

And answering to Hamman: yes, MLPs can be decoded. dvdaripper.exe just unencrypts the AOBs, so that you can later burn them to another DVD. And ppcmripper.exe can take these unencrypted AOBs and output high quality wavs out of them.

DVDARipper.exe decrypts the AUDIO_TS files to the hard disk. You then have to burn them to a DVD-R, thus producing an unencrypted copy of the DVD-Audio.
Then you insert that DVD-R instead of the original DVD, and use PPCMRipper.exe. It actually launches WinDVD. There, you select the track(s) you want to play (you also often have the choice between 5.1 and stereo content). You need to play the tracks in real time, and in the mean time PPCMRipper.exe extracts the audio to .wav files on the hard drive. I noticed that you need to set up WinDVD properly in order to extract the right audio (check "24bit/96kHz output" and set up the target audio system to 5.1 in the "audio center").

In the end, the whole process is quite inconvenient (rip, burn, record), but at least we can finally rip our DVD-A's.

DVDAExplorer_a7.exe can extract the original .mlp files out of the unencrypted copy of the DVD-A. The trouble is, I don't know of any software that is capable of decoding them. Even WinDVD refuses to open such files. And btw, WaveLab doesn't support that codec either, so even though you pass the unencrypted DVD-A to it, it will fail saying that the audio is in an unknown format.

I will post a sample of the ripped audio shortly for anyone to review. I'm very curious to see if it is indeed the original 24bit/92kHz audio, or a 24bit/92kHz upsample of a 16bit/48kHz downsample of the original 24bit/96kHz audio (!), since apparently WinDVD refuses to output the full resolution to anything else than the sanctionned Creative Labs Audigy soundcard (see the thread Digital copy of DVD-A Tracks about the issue). I'm hoping that the tools bypass that restriction somehow.

The software is still very alpha-quality, but at least it seems to work, and that's a first. Thank you very much rjamorim for providing us those tools, and a big thank you to the author.

Edit: I actually use the word "actually" way too often...

It should be possible to mount it as a virtual drive with daemon tools or something similar, right?

I'd like to add my thanks also. I think I'm going to buy my first DVD-Audio disc today, solely due to the fact that I can now rip them. I'm curious to see whether it's true that the mastering on certain DVD-A titles is better than their CD counterpart (loudness race).

See, music industry? If you had treated the consumer with respect from the beginning and not used copy protection, I'd probably own a dozen or so DVD-A's by now.

I suspect you can mount the audio_ts in Daemon Tools and the like. Maybe that'll fool WinDVD?



Yes, unfortunately, MLP is a completely closed and proprietary format.



Excellent, thanks



I suspect it does, but testing it would be indeed the best way to know for sure.



Glad you found this useful

Now let's start the countdown until a RIAA registered letter arrives at my mailbox...


OBS: There's a caveat, according to the guy that suggested these tools for me. WinDVD won't play unencrypted and watermarked DVD-As. The logic is this:

you can play encrypted with watermarking (original)
you can play encrypted without watermarking (original)
you can play unencrypted without watermarking (home)
you can't play unencrypted with watermarking (pirate)

Strangely enough, PowerDVD will play unencrypted + watermarked streams fine.

Wow! It's a bad new for the DVD forum (but a good one for companies behind SACD).
I've three DVD-A (including 2 classical one) and I'm very interested to check them through an audio editor. Thanks for hosting the applications, Roberto.

Well I'll be buying a DVD-Audio disc tomorrow.

It would be awesome if the format actually became more popular after this new "feature" got enabled.

That would probably send a hint or two to the recording studios.