Another dumb question

[georgesgiralt]

Hi Guys,
Is it possible and if yes how change or suppress the region code in a DVD ISO image ?
Thanks in advance for your help and advices !
Have a nice and bright day.

[PegasusPilot]

Hey georgesgiralt,

Did you ever get any assistance from someone about this? I don’t see any responses below your original request, and you got me thinking about this too now. I did a not-insignificant amount of searching myself, including on the doom9 forum, but ALL of the info I could find only explained the different media region codes themselves and (potentially) how to circumvent the region check on the device.

Since home-made movies are all Region 0 (region-free) and all other region codes (I believe) are only found on officially licensed/professionally-manufactured sourced disks, my best guess is that the region is hard-coded into the disk itself prior to/during burning. I have no way to prove that (so I might be making an ass of myself) and I can’t find any information regarding the disks, besides that the region code is read by the player/drive at initial spin-up and will either allow further loading or kill the read operation. Occam’s Razor, or just bullshit?

Regardless, I haven’t experienced an issue with inability to play a backed-up DVD copy due to region coding yet (all of my drives are region 1); I’m going to further assume that this has to do with LibreDrive reading the raw data from your disk without regarding any hard-coded region designation, or that it’s not affected because the backed-up ISO won’t have this region designation anyways.

Thoughts?

[dcoke22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

^ that gives a reasonable Wikipedia level of explanation. The short, short version is DVD players have firmware that checks a well known location on a DVD for the region code programmed onto the disc. If the disc is outside the region the player is set to, the player refuses to play the disc (even though technically it could play it just fine).

LibreDrive functionality in MakeMKV (with proper optical drives) allows MakeMKV to ignore this behavior and produce .mkv files which don't have the concept of region coding.

I can't say either way about what MakeMKV does with region coding when it produces an .iso backup of a DVD. I would guess it does not change it in any way. There probably is some other software that can remove the region coding from a DVD .iso backup, but I don't know what it is.

[georgesgiralt]

Hello,
Changing the region code involve changing a file in the file tree of the DVD. Which is read only.
So if you know how to change a read only file on a read only file system, bob's your uncle....

[exitguy]

Hello,
Changing the region code involve changing a file in the file tree of the DVD. Which is read only.
So if you know how to change a read only file on a read only file system, bob's your uncle....

And if you don't know then Martha is your aunt .....

[Rojma]

If you use the MakeMKV backup function to backup a DVD to ISO, it will remove copy protection/encryption (CSS) and change the region to all regions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ). However, it doesn't remove RCE protection, although I don't know if this matters since it is set to all regions. To remove RCE protection or other type of protections like PUOs (prohibited user operations - think not being able to skip warning screens or previews), you can use DVD Decrypter. DVD Decrypter isn't very good at removing copy protection from most modern DVDs (it hasn't been updated like in 20 years), but that is what MakeMKV is for. Once you remove the copy protection, then you can make additional modifications with DVR Decrypter since the resulting ISO from MakeMKV is no longer protected.

If you have existing backed up ISOs that were created with something other than MakeMKV, assuming they don't have any type of copy protection, then you have the following options:

1) Load the ISO into MakeMKV and then use the back up function of MakeMKV to create a new ISO that is all regions.
2) Load the ISO into DVD Decypter, make sure the remove RC and RCE protections options are enabled, and the create a new ISO.

[Rojma]

FYI I just read up on RCE (region code enhanced) protection vs just RC (region protection) protection and it looks like RCE protection adds an additional layer in a case where you are using a region-free or multi-region player. I guess it prohibits playing the disc on a region free or multi-region player? If your "player" is set to only one specific region, then it shouldn't matter and the RCE protection should be irrelevant.

[georgesgiralt]

If you use the MakeMKV backup function to backup a DVD to ISO, it will remove copy protection/encryption (CSS) and change the region to all regions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, . However, it doesn't remove RCE protection, although I don't know if this matters since it is set to all regions. To remove RCE protection or other type of protections like PUOs (prohibited user operations - think not being able to skip warning screens or previews), you can use DVD Decrypter. DVD Decrypter isn't very good at removing copy protection from most modern DVDs (it hasn't been updated like in 20 years), but that is what MakeMKV is for. Once you remove the copy protection, then you can make additional modifications with DVR Decrypter since the resulting ISO from MakeMKV is no longer protected.

If you have existing backed up ISOs that were created with something other than MakeMKV, assuming they don't have any type of copy protection, then you have the following options:

1) Load the ISO into MakeMKV and then use the back up function of MakeMKV to create a new ISO that is all regions.
2) Load the ISO into DVD Decypter, make sure the remove RC and RCE protections options are enabled, and the create a new ISO.

Hello Rojma,
I knew I had somewhere a region 1 DVD to try your assertion above. Today, I was able to test....
As you can see, it is seen as region 1 by VLC.

Code: Select all

$ vlc 
VLC media player 3.0.16 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2)
[000055b4a819a580] main libvlc: Lancement de vlc avec l'interface par défaut. Utiliser « cvlc » pour démarrer VLC sans interface.
Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.
[000055b4a823d170] main playlist: playlist is empty
[00007d94fc001130] dvdnav demux: DVD Title: APOLLO69
[00007d94fc001130] dvdnav demux: DVD Serial Number: 24319B57
[00007d94fc001130] dvdnav demux: DVD Title (Alternative): APOLLO69
[00007d94fc001130] dvdnav demux: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fe0000. Regions: 01
[00007d94fc001130] dvdnav demux: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
[00007d94fc001130] dvdnav demux: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient
libdvdnav: Suspected RCE Region Protection!!!
libdvdnav: Suspected RCE Region Protection!!!
.....................

So I make an ISO file using MakeMkv and, alas, this ISO is also region 1 and, as far as I can tell, has the CSS key inside it :

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$ vlc ~/Vidéos/backup/APOLLO69.iso 
VLC media player 3.0.16 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2)
[000057c640177580] main libvlc: Lancement de vlc avec l'interface par défaut. Utiliser « cvlc » pour démarrer VLC sans interface.
disc.c:437: error opening file BDMV/index.bdmv
disc.c:437: error opening file BDMV/BACKUP/index.bdmv
bluray.c:2652: nav_get_title_list((null)) failed
Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.
libdvdnav: Suspected RCE Region Protection!!!
libdvdnav: Suspected RCE Region Protection!!!
disc.c:437: error opening file BDMV/index.bdmv
disc.c:437: error opening file BDMV/BACKUP/index.bdmv
bluray.c:2652: nav_get_title_list((null)) failed
[00007cbe74001190] dvdnav demux: DVD Title: APOLLO69
[00007cbe74001190] dvdnav demux: DVD Serial Number: 24319B57
[00007cbe74001190] dvdnav demux: DVD Title (Alternative): APOLLO69
[00007cbe74001190] dvdnav demux: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fe0000. Regions: 01
[00007cbe74001190] dvdnav demux: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
[00007cbe74001190] dvdnav demux: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient
libdvdnav: Suspected RCE Region Protection!!!
libdvdnav: Suspected RCE Region Protection!!!
[00007cbe68003e70] gl gl: Initialized libplacebo v4.192.1 (API v192)

So either this behaviour changed somewhere from the time you tested it or it is not makemkv which is able to do this...
Have a nice and bright day.

[Rojma]

Not sure about your tests. Today I ripped a DVD that had RCE (region) protection with MakeMKV. The regions on the original DVD were 1 and 4, as seen in the following screenshots from DVD Decrypter:



DVD Decrypter also asks me to select a region when I insert the original DVD.



Notice that only regions 1 and 4 are listed.

Based on the above information, we can see that the original DVD has RCE protection and is limited to regions 1 and 4.

After I run the DVD through MakeMKV and make an ISO copy, and then load that ISO in DVD Decrypter, I instead getting the following region info:



We can see that the copy protection has been removed, but the RCE protection is still there. However, it now includes all regions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 ). This is further confirmed when I load the ISO in DVD Decrypter it asks me to pick a region:



Notice how now regions 1-8 are now all listed.

When I then run the ISO made by MakeMKV through DVD Decrypter, it then removes the RCE protection completely:



When loading this ISO copy made by DVD Decrypter, I also no longer get the region select screen, further confirming that the RCE protection has been removed.

This is all using MakeMKV version 1.17.8 and DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0.

This confirms that MakeMKV removes copy protection from DVDs, but doesn't remove RCE protection. However, MakeMKV does change the region to all regions, so the RCE protection shouldn't matter (except for possible All Regions/Region "0" players). Does this behavior depend on the optical drive being used? Not sure, but the drive where I did this was an ASUS BW-16D1HT set to Region 1 and cross flashed to the firmware that doesn't have the sleep bug.

Why do I run the DVDs through both MakeMKV and DVD Decrypter? I have found that DVD Decrypter being a much older program can't handle the copy protection on some newer DVDs. On the other hand, MakeMKV seems to handle all DVD copy protection that I have thrown at it. So why do I run it through DVD Decrypter? Because DVD Decrypter does ultimately do some other things that MakeMKV doesn't, such as remove RCE protection (not that it matters since MakeMKV changes it to all regions, except for possibly an "all regions" player) and PUOs (Prohibited User Operations - basically not being able to skip warnings or trailers).

[Rojma]

One other comment - my comments are strictly for DVDs, which seem to be the ones mostly impacted by region coding. I don't know if you did your tests with a Blu-Ray or 4K Blu-Ray. It seems like the industry has learned that region coding doesn't make sense anymore so most 4K Blu-Rays aren't region locked. I haven't really paid too much attention to normal Blu-Rays and if the backups made by MakeMKV removes region encoding for them.

[Rojma]

I have an interesting update. I decided to compare apples to apples, so instead of viewing the information through DVD Decrypter, I decided to view the information in VLC. For point of reference, I am using VLC in Windows, and getting the information from the log/messages window. Here is what I found:

Original disk:

Code: Select all

dvdnav info: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f60000. Regions: 01 04

ISO created in MakeMKV, and opened as a file in VLC:

Code: Select all

dvdnav info: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f60000. Regions: 01 04

ISO created in MakeMKV, and opened in VLC as a disc from mounted ISO:

Code: Select all

dvdnav info: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f60000. Regions: 01 04

ISO created in MakeMKV and then processed with DVD Decrypter, opened from mounted ISO:

Code: Select all

dvdnav info: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00000000. Regions: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

So these results match what you were seeing in VLC, but conflicts with what I am seeing in DVD Decrypter. This is all the same disc/ISOs, with all the programs (MakeMKV, DVD Decrypter, VLC) running on the same PC. In other words, VLC and DVD Decrypter running on the same PC and opening the same ISO files are disagreeing about the region encoding.

Anyone know of some other tool that can be used to check region encoding?

Also, this whole subject has got me curious about region encoding. Anyone know of a tool that can be used to check region encoding on Blu-ray/4K Blu-ray discs?

[Chetwood]

It's been quite a while but IIRC DVD Shrink also strips region coding. You could give it a go.