DVD-Ranger developers respond to Audacity claims, show new tool

In a blog post the DVD-Ranger developers respond to comments that claim Audacity works as good as their software. They've also sent us a screenshot of a developer tool they're using and plan to release. On their website they've posted test results of an attempt to playback a backup of the movie Resident Evil AfterLive using the open source audio edit software Audacity. They've used the settings that can be found on our forum and were posted by our resident member Macrovision3500 (exact settings here).

According to the DVD-Ranger developers these settings do not remove the Cinavia protection. They state they've tested the solution and after the fifth time they played the movie on a Playstation 3 the console showed Cinavia message after 20 minutes. The Audacity method has not been tested or verified by us, but changing the audio quality is a likely way of defeating Cinavia, which is a copy protection that consists of a inaudible watermark in the audio stream.

ADVERTISEMENT

However, as stated in our article on Cinavia, patents of the copy protection show that the developers of the protection have thought about the possibility of  audio editing by people who want to bypass the protection. The patents state that in case the audio is edited in such a way that the watermark is removed, also the audio quality should be heavily degraded.

Besides the blog post, we also received a screenshot and additional information from DVD-Ranger about a tool they use to develop CinEx, the module of which we have verified makes backups of Blu-ray movies from which Cinavia is removed.  However the module has a major drawback, the audio quality of the backup clearly needs improvement. Improving this audio quality seems to be the biggest challenge now and the developers use the panel below (click to enlarge).

myce-cinavia-panel

ADVERTISEMENT

This tool should become available with the final release of CinEx and is used to fine tune the audio output. The panel allows to change the audio real-time, it's possible to connect an audio source that is playing a Cinavia protected movie and change the settings on the fly. Once the optimum settings are found it's possible to save them and make them available for others to download. This means once the ultimate settings are found for a movie, others can benefit from this too.

One of the developers explains, "Currently we are using a mask that removes Cinavia. This mask leaves bad audio at the position where it removed Cinavia". He continues with, " With the panel we also fine tune the audio output. We have a pipe in our internal player that is connected with the panel. So we start the movie in the player in the main dialog and start the panel. Now we can try out different settings while pay the movie and so we have a live feedback what we have changed".

Once the changes are made and they think they've found a good mask, they do more things,  the developer explains, "After we think we have found a good mask an audio fine tuning we run a KI based algorithm over a test file. The test file is an m2ts where 8 movies are joined.  All these movies have special features inside, so the KI can find the best harmonic setting for this. It is to find an average of quality."  He goes on to state, " After this we have to test it against Cinavia to see if the mask is ok or if the mask leaves some Cinavia parts/signals. Also it is possible that all the post processing reconstruct Cinavia, too. This is a very difficult part".

ADVERTISEMENT

Cinavia is a copy protection for Blu-ray that is mandatory on Blu-ray players since 2012. The protection is based on a watermark that is embedded in the audio stream of a Blu-ray movie. Blu-ray players, both hardware and software contain a Cinavia detector that checks for a valid watermark. If not found because e.g. someone tries to playback a backup of a movie, the audio is muted after 20 minutes and a Cinavia message will appear. Recent versions of the protection might also prompt the user to purchase a legitimate version online.

Currently there are several methods developed to bypass the protection so users can playback backups of their Blu-ray discs, besides the here discussed CinEx module. DVDFab and AnyDVD seem to block the Cinavia detection algorithms, which only works on software based Blu-ray players. Another method is trying to distort the audio in such a way that Cinavia is no longer detected, this till now, has the drawback of bad sound quality.

The pre-release of the CinEx module can be downloaded from the DVD-Ranger website.

Discuss this release in our Movie Copy Forum, also check out our extensive article revealing all details on Cinavia.

No posts to display