Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

Hi Eric,

As far as I know, only proprietary systems used by the majors are capable of applying CSS keys directly. Certainly not even the Sonic programs can do this. So any DLT you are likely to encounter can be read back and an unencrypted VIDEO_TS folder created, without having to do any actual decryption. The authoring system just sets flags, and adds a 6-byte header to each sector, which indicates which sectors are to be encrypted. Typically, not all sectors are encrypted, to save work in the player, just enough to scramble the video.

Also, DVDAE is the only authoring program that can read any DLT from any commercial authoring system, as far as I know. Others can only read DLT's that they created, if at all. Gear Pro Mastering can read DLT's that are not marked for encryption.

Regards,

Larry

Yes, DVDAE will restore a DDP image or DLT with macrovision. It will also restore one with CSS flagged, assuming the keys have not already been applied. Since the images normally only contain the flags that indicate CSS should be applied at the replication stage, I don't even think this is illegal, but I may be wrong. In fact, since Macrovision is analogue, I don't see that removing it is necessarily illegal either - but I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word for it ! However DVDAE will not extract a CSS encrypted pressed disc ( where the keys have been applied ) since this is illegal in the US.

Hope that helps ?

Ian