Copy protect dvd?

sunshinegirl690 · Post by **sunshinegirl690** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:29 pm

Has anyone copy protected a DVD? I know I can put a watermark on it. I have been requested a copy of a DVD I made for a small business by their manufacturing company.

Susan

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:32 pm

Only if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars for the macrovision type licence etc. And we know how effective that is anyway...

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:38 pm

This has been asked many times, in a nutshell you can't.
Think of the DVD's you buy from the shops or rent out - those with the FBI warnings. These contain elaborate copy protection mechanisms like macrovision. I would be very surprised if anyone here hasn't at some time been offered a pirate copy (not suggesting you bought it!) of one of those Hollywood Film DVD's.

In fact if you found a way to prevent a DVD from being copied then you will suddenly find yourself very rich indeed - and don't sell your system to the first person who comes along .

Our best advice is to create yourself a fist play video along the lines of one of those FBI type warning screens and then either place a discreet logo in a corner of the video like those mickey mouse ears in a Disney Film, or every now and again make a subtitle appear reminding viewers that it should not be copied etc.

sunshinegirl690 · Post by **sunshinegirl690** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:51 pm

Thanks guys! I didn't think I could! So the watermark (logo) will have to do. Hopefully if they want copies or something else they will hire me!

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 2:35 am

Copy protection is expensive, but the software to crack copy protection (illegal here in the USA) is FREE if you can find it!

If you are doing small-scale for-profit DVD production, it's best to have a business model that does not rely on the number of copies sold. (Try to make money from the service you provide, rather than from the DVD sales.)

If you have your copies made by a replication/duplication house, they will have licenses for Macrovision/Copyguard (analog protection) and CSS (digital protection). And, they will charge you an additional per-DVD fee for it. This means a minimum order... of perhaps 500-1000 DVDs, but that's just a guess.

In the past, "burned" copies could only be protected by Macrovision. CSS was only possible on stamped (high volume) DVDs. But, I think there may now be special blanks that can use CSS. It's my understanding that this technology is going to be used for "burn on demand" DVD kiosks.