Region code problem [1]

[RichardC]

When and if the moderators approve my post with the new topic Region code problem, please will they edit it to add the following.
When the disk is loaded MakeMKV reports
Protection: CSS/CPPM
Is that protection supported by MakeMKV?

[Woodstock]

Unless your drive has firmware that prevent it, MakeMKV will strip region coding. Even when the firmware TRIES to prevent it, MakeMKV is often successful. You will get a warning if it cannot.

Generally speaking, if a disk can play in a standard DVD player, it should be rippable with MakeMKV, and the copy protection schemes will be removed. I've ripped both region 1 and 2 disks on my systems. Two of them have not had a region selected for their drives.... MakeMKV gives me a region warning on any disk, but rips them just fine.

[RichardC]

Thanks for your reply. I am afraid I have made rather a mess of this post. I started in the DVD error reports forum. I was told it needed moderator approval. I thought perhaps I was in the wrong forum, so I came here and added more detail. I was again told I needed moderator approval. I then thought of some further information so I left this note asking the moderators to add it if my post was approved. When the post was approved I edited it to add this information, only to find the edit also needed moderator approval.

You will eventually see what it is all about. (The 2002 Andrew Davies version of Doctor Zhivago with Keira Knightley.)

I would be surprised if it is the drive which is giving effect to region coding differently from other drives. It is a cheap (£27) Chinese external USB drive (with an extra power lead) sold under the name COOLEAD. I have only just bought it. I have only partially ripped DVDs and blu-ray disks so far, but I have opened 6 DVDs and 6 blu-ray disks, some of which say they are region coded, and this, which says it is region 2, is the only one to give a problem.

Anyway following your comment I tried it in an internal drive with Windows Explorer. When I tried to copy one of the .VOB files I got the same error message as with the external drive
Error 0x80030309: Copy Protection Error - the read failed because the sector is encrypted.

I have checked in Device Manager and none of the drives has a region selected and all have 5 changes remaining.

[RichardC]

I have just tried copying the files from the DVD in Ubuntu using the same internal drive. It copied more than Windows Explorer but all the .VOB files except VIDEO_TS.VOB had an IO error and were truncated.

If I use Windows Explorer to copy a 1GByte .VOB file from another DVD claiming to be region 2 it copies without problem, and MakeMKV successfully rips the DVD.

[RichardC]

What I have described in the last two posts is of course copying through the operating system, whether it is Windows or Linux. The messages from MakeMKV refer to a direct access mode, which presumably works at a lower level. Could it be that the CSS/CPPM protection referred to is defeating even MakeMKV's direct access mode?

[RichardC]

I have now done what I should have done sooner, and run MakeMKV on another drive. It has now successfully ripped the DVD. Woodstock was right; the COOLEAD drive was at fault, not MakeMKV. I'll post the MakeMKV output in another post, in case it needs moderator approval.

[RichardC]

This is the MakeMKV output referred to in my last post.

MakeMKV v1.9.2 win(x86-release) started
Using direct disc access mode
Title #1 has length of 1 seconds which is less than minimum title length of 120 seconds and was therefore skipped
Title #2 was added (12 cell(s), 1:51:48)
Region setting of drive SONY:DVD RW DW-G120A does not match the region of currently inserted disc, trying to work around...
Operation successfully completed
Using direct disc access mode
Open DVD manually : "01:1-3"
Manual String parse error : chapter 3 is invalid, should be 1-1
Manual String parse error : invalid subtoken: 1-3
Manual String parse error : invalid token: 01:1-3
Failed to open disc
Using direct disc access mode
Open DVD manually : "01:1-4"
Manual String parse error : chapter 4 is invalid, should be 1-1
Manual String parse error : invalid subtoken: 1-4
Manual String parse error : invalid token: 01:1-4
Failed to open disc
Using direct disc access mode
Title #1 has length of 1 seconds which is less than minimum title length of 120 seconds and was therefore skipped
Title #2 was added (12 cell(s), 1:51:48)
Region setting of drive SONY:DVD RW DW-G120A does not match the region of currently inserted disc, trying to work around...
Operation successfully completed
Using direct disc access mode
Open DVD manually : "02:1-3"
Title #2 was added (3 cell(s), 0:30:37)
Region setting of drive SONY:DVD RW DW-G120A does not match the region of currently inserted disc, trying to work around...
Operation successfully completed
Saving 1 titles into directory K:/Video/DR_ZHIVAGO
1 titles saved


The .mkv plays fine in VLC.