I was helping an old retired colleague of mine, with copying/converting some of his old DVD-collection into MP4-files. “Simple!, I am just going to add the libdvdcss-2.dll file etc, to the Handbrake folder and the DVD will read just fine.” I thought.
It turned out to not be so simple anymore. What once worked perfectly fine, is now impossible. I can’t read most of the DVD discs, and even when one is working at first, it fails shortly after.
It’s clear to me, that there is a layer of DRM either in hardware or in Windows 10 itself, that is preventing any reading of encrypted DVDs, before the data even reaches 3rd party software?
Are there anyone out there, who have a solution to the problem of reading DVDs in Windows?
What is going on here?
There actually are additional layers of DRM on Sony movie studio DVDs that only really MakeMKV can do something about:
Nowadays, rip with MakeMKV and a Libredrive, then encode using FFmpeg. (Handbrake is ancient history now, Fastflix is slowly replacing Handbrake with built in AV1 support)
NO, Handbrake is not a 1:1 FFmpeg GUI. It screws up encoding between constant framerate and variable framerate. FFmpeg CLI doesn’t do this unless you remux MKV to MP4 (as MKV timestamps cause video streams to turn into variable framerate when remuxed to MP4)
Here is the thing though, it HAVE to be simple, since the colleague is an old boomer and all. It can’t be command line based, multi step origami.
Handbrake can utilize the GPU for conversion, which is kind of nice when it comes reducing waiting times. The audio stream passthrough function is also simple and easy to use.
Is there a way to just get an decrypted .iso file instead of an .mkv? Back in the days we used DVD Decrypter for that, but I am not even sure it is around anymore without some trojan attached?
What everything points to now, is that the firmware in the drives themselves are preventing access to parts of the discs, and what circumstances is allowed.
The problem would as far as I see it, remain regardless of 3rd party software.
It depends on MakeMKV because this bypasses riplocks which limit your rip speed to 1x, and can deal with additional protections like ARccOS on DVD and BD+ on Blu-ray. Libredrive also apparently gets around region locks.
I would really like to avoid using MakeMKV if possible.
Right now the issue seems to be able to read certain data. Encrypted or not. This is how far as I understand, manmade limitations carried out through the drives firmware. By this I assume, by modifying the firmware, I can gain reading access to the encrypted data, and then be able to decrypt it through whatever software with decryption capabilities?
If I could just find a complete library of supported drives and the firmware, I could maybe get going, but I find the site a giant mess for me.
Edit: It just occurred to me, that the reason I can’t find any firmware for “TSSTcorp” drives, is because there isn’t any?
