UK Ratatatouille DVD does not play chapters

[lawrencek]

Hi there,

I bought Ratatouille locally in the uk BUA0047101 barcode 8717418150426.

VLC 0.8.6B will open it and get the menu. If I click on the menu, for the english version, it gives me the warning about piracy and then does not go on to play the film. There is no disk activity, it has not misread the disk.

VLC otherwise works fine, and will play region 1 disks (US) and everything else I have thrown at it - what has gone wrong?

I need to know soon if i need to take the disk back.

Lawrence

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

They have a special protection...

Try to add "no menus" option.

[lawrencek]

i hope that you will be able to tell me what the protection is <start gripe> its my cd and i should be able to play it anywhere - why is it protected <end grip>. I hope that you will be able to play it for me - do not have a dvd player other than my pc

lawrence

[VLC_help]

You can use DVDfabdecrypter or AnyDVD and try to rip movie to harddrive and then try to play it.

[lawrencek]

I hope you will add that functionality to VLC. I have bought a legit copy and i cannot play it

I feel annoyed with Disney....

Lawrence

[lawrencek]

i did get it to play each chapter, but i have to restart it and bump the chapter up to play the next.

I imagine i will have to make a play list and use that, but what do you think the problem is and why does vlc not play it?

Lawrence

[VLC_help]

VLC has some issues with certain DVD menu structures, which might be fixed in nightly builds.
http://nightlies.videolan.org/
but in those cases VLC usually crashes so as j-b said earlier problem might be with added copy protections which are agains DVD specs and because of that, they cause issues to computer playback.

[lawrencek]

thanks for your help.
are you familiar with the problem on this DVD? I can play the chapters, i suppose i will have to add them to a play list.How about VLC being able to play a range of chapters, eg something like @1:1-1:15 or what ever the syntax is. Is it illegal to play a CD ihave bought legitimally on my computer? Do you know what the problem is?

I will try the latest build and see how it goes - or i could send you the cd to try!

LawrenceK

[jimmyo]

Lawrence - I had the same problem with Rataouille U.S. Version when I bought that. Are you using a Windows computer to play VLC?

...Jim

[lawrencek]

Yes i am, a dell d420 running windows XP. On another machine i tried simpply copying the disk xcopy but it hung on one ot the VOB files.

What do you think the problem is?

LawrenceK

[VLC_help]

You can't copy commercial DVDs with copy, xcopy, explorer etc, you have to decrypt them with tools I mentioned before.

[lawrencek]

I expected that. How does a DVD player read the disk then,and how can VLC emulate such a player? Or does the OS conspire against you?

Why should i not be allowed to play it on a computer that emulates a DVD player? and why do the decryptor progams work -ifthey do -surely this should be built into VLC or is it beyond their brief?

LawrenceK

[VLC_help]

You need certain keys to decrypt data that comes from DVD if it uses CSS. Software like VLC, PowerDVD, WinDVD have those keys build in, so they can decrypt data on fly. Because CSS system has some patents and license thingys in many countries, you should pay money if you use their technology. Also circumventing CSS in any way is illegal in some countries. And technically you don't own the movies, you only have watching rights.

Because CSS was cracked so quickly, movie studios started to add their own copy protections schemes that should stop copying of DVD movies. Nasty part is that most of those protections broke DVD specifications which usually cause some problems to certain players and software. So some companies created software which can detect those protections and copy data from discs that use those protections. But because there isn't really specs how bypass those protections, open source frontier is missing those building blocks and that is why VLC might have issues with those discs.

[lawrencek]

thank you for your help and very comprehensive answer. I have just bought Ardman Curse of the Were Rabbit and hope that this will not have the same problem.

Since with DVD players (standard) the firmware in them is fixed, how can you play in them successfully these disks? And why cannot a computer emulate them? is the firmware in a DVD player proprietary for these decoding methods and why cannot a pc emulate them?

In some cases i think that you could have copy protection if the disk was unbalanced, and it runs faster in a pc. If this is the case, can a player slow the disk down? And why or how can those decryptor programs fix it. Can you supply "codecs" as plug ins for vlc that one could pay for perhaps.

BTW i found i could play the ratataouille disk with the latest vlc. I had to start at the right chapter and i got the menu to play the film and it did. But it gave me a windows error box that IF I DID NOT DISMISS IT allowed the movie to play in the other window of vlc.

So, can you help me more, and should i download a later version of vlc?

Regards

Lawrence

[VLC_help]

Some stand alone DVDplayers also have issues with certain discs but most of DVD movies play OK. You can emulate things to certain point, but there are some differences in firmware level between certain DVD players and computer drives which are harder to imitate.

You can slow back optical drives with tools like Nero CD/DVD speed but I am not familiar any DVD Video protection that would use drive speed as protection.

Those companies that manufacture these discs circumvention tools usually analyze problematic discs and figure out how to circumvent those protections. You could supply patches to VLC, but taking money would be a bad idea.

What does the error message say?

And you can try nightly builds, if they handle those discs any better.
http://nightlies.videolan.org/

[lawrencek]

I just get an access violation but I am not sure what causes that

how much disk space does vlc need on the primary drive?

Also The Curse Of The Were Rabbit (Ardman) will play the second disk but i cannot play the film on the first disk

Is there something else i should do? and can you add to the error message processing to trace the problem?

BTW other cds like the simpsons movie, milleniun (sci fi) and the worlds fastest indian (Hopkins) uk work well and the dinosaurs region 1 henson movies.

I really need your help.

Lawrence

[lawrencek]

got the latest nightly and managed to play both the disks but i still get the gpf and i am not sure how i did it. i would like it to be easier.....

Lawrence

[VLC_help]

VLC doesn't need additional disk space nor should any other video player. Does Media Player Classic work any better with those movies? View -> Messages might give some info about problems.

[lawrencek]

i don't have any other media player than windows media player and your vlc. Media player classic - is that the realalternative thingy? I dont know what the eror message means just a gpf

lawrencek

[VLC_help]

Media Player Classic is another Open Source mediaplayer which also has DVD support build in.
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video ... lassic.cfm

You can also paste VLC error messages here so someone might figure what they mean.