Obfuscation Newbie & ISO question

[ChicagoJoe69]

I guess I've been lucky because I have only recently had my first encounters with Playlist Obfuscation. Seems like a lot of trouble to deal with.

If I only want to create a backup copy of my BD and do not absolutely need playable files on an HD is it a reasonable solution to simply copy the entire disk to an .iso then burn a BD copy from that? Whatever stupid stuff is on the disk the players (standalone or software) seem to know how to deal with, right? It doesn't even need decryption since the players deal with that as well (although given a choice, sure, decrypt it). Will an .iso burned to a BD work properly or do they do any tricks that a run of the mill BD burner cannot duplicate? It would be nice to be able to make a backup copy that is an exact clone.

What software is recommended? Will MakeMKV create .iso's? I've tried a couple of "free" iso makers like WinISO and ISOWorkshop which looked promising but in actual use the free versions have impossibly small size restrictions. Is there an unrestricted free option? And then what to burn with?


While I'll pony up if I must I would rather look for free options first since I don't even know whether this will work.

[Billycar11]

if you decrypt a movie with play list obfuscation and burn it to a disc it will never work righ
leaving it decrypted you have a better chance but remember they try and stop disc duplicating you may still sometimes have weird issues.
best to just copy it to a hdd as an mkv with correct playlist and use an unofficial player not a real bluray player

[ChicagoJoe69]

So I can’t just clone a disc leaving it encrypted, an exact copy of the original?

[Billycar11]

So I can’t just clone a disc leaving it encrypted, an exact copy of the original?

It would work on some players but not all really not worth the hassle when you run into the ones that dont

[ChicagoJoe69]

May as well give it a try. Can anyone recommend a free, unrestricted BD to .iso maker?

[dcoke22]

I don't have a recommendation as I've never attempted to make an .iso from a blu-ray.

I am curious, however, what your goal is? Perhaps it is just to make a duplicate disc, which is fine. But maybe it is something like letting kids play movies in their room without ruining discs?

[ChicagoJoe69]

My goal is to make a duplicate disk. I want to be able to have copies of a few favorites so I can have them at two places and not have to remember to bring them. Blu-ray media on Blu-ray disk is more efficient than taking up a lot of drive space.

Even without the obfuscation issue, I've not yet learned how to make a BD that is playable on an ordinary player. I've taken the primary file from a few rips and turned it into a DCP playable from a cinema server. (Yes, private use only!) But that's not a general solution as it takes a looooong time to convert and then takes up even more drive space.

[MartyMcNuts]

My goal is to make a duplicate disk. I want to be able to have copies of a few favorites so I can have them at two places and not have to remember to bring them. Blu-ray media on Blu-ray disk is more efficient than taking up a lot of drive space.

Even without the obfuscation issue, I've not yet learned how to make a BD that is playable on an ordinary player. I've taken the primary file from a few rips and turned it into a DCP playable from a cinema server. (Yes, private use only!) But that's not a general solution as it takes a looooong time to convert and then takes up even more drive space.

There's no point in leaving it encrypted. It won't work on essentially anything. If you want to create an iso, create a decrypted iso. Atleast this way you can write it to disc and play it on any player.

To do this, you could use MakeMKV to rip the disc to a decrypted BD folder then use ImgBurn to write the decrypted folder to iso or use another software that can do it in one step, such as DVDFab.

[ChicagoJoe69]

Why would it not work if encrypted? Doesn't the player take care of that? Sure, given a choice decrypted gives more options.

Will your suggest result in generally playable disk? I'm assuming it would not requiring authoring the disk, making menus etc.

And does it solve the obfuscation issue? I just figure if players know how to deal with whatever crazy sh*t they are doing on some recent disks then a disk that is an exact copy will be successfully handled the same way.

When I've made backups of DVDs, I've just used DVDShrink and (previously) it went right into Nero. I guess it doesn't link to my present Nero (just the bundled version). So I rip to an .iso and then open Nero and tell it to burn an .iso.

[MartyMcNuts]

Why would it not work if encrypted? Doesn't the player take care of that? Sure, given a choice decrypted gives more options.

Will your suggest result in generally playable disk? I'm assuming it would not requiring authoring the disk, making menus etc.

And does it solve the obfuscation issue? I just figure if players know how to deal with whatever crazy sh*t they are doing on some recent disks then a disk that is an exact copy will be successfully handled the same way.

When I've made backups of DVDs, I've just used DVDShrink and (previously) it went right into Nero. I guess it doesn't link to my present Nero (just the bundled version). So I rip to an .iso and then open Nero and tell it to burn an .iso.

An encrypted copy won't work as there are certain sectors on the original blu ray disc that cannot be copied while retaining encryption. If you decrypt the disc to a folder first then create an iso from that decrypted folder, then there will no longer be any form of encryption to worry about and the iso will still keep the complete blu ray structure just like the original disc.

If you have Nero, you could use it I guess. Just rip the disc to a folder using MakeMKV, then use Nero to create an iso from the decrypted folder.

Simply give it a try and see if that works for you.

[Woodstock]

If you're using an official BD player, there are a lot of potential issues with an encrypted file. Some will simply refuse to decrypt if they detect that the disk is a copy. Official players will also enforce Cinavia protection (explained elsewhere), while "media players" usually will simply ignore it.

A portable 2 or 4 TB drive is a lot smaller than the stack of BDs it would replace. The projector I use for meetings has its own media player that I can simply plug a portable drive into, and watch most anything I want.

[dcoke22]

I've taken the primary file from a few rips and turned it into a DCP playable from a cinema server. (Yes, private use only!) But that's not a general solution as it takes a looooong time to convert and then takes up even more drive space.

Wow. I've never known someone to A) have DCP playback software and B) convert a blu-ray rip into a DCP. That's kinda cool, although not particularly space efficient.

Most people just rip to a .mkv file and drop it on a Plex server and use their favorite streaming box as a client at the TV or shrink the file down and put it into a .mp4 container via Handbrake to stuff onto a USB stick that can be played via the USB port on many recent blu-ray players or TVs. Since a roughly 30GB blu-ray rip can be shrunk down to a 5 - 10GB .mp4 at fairly high quality, it is fairly easy to walk around with a large movie library on one's phone these days.

[ChicagoJoe69]

Not DCP player software but a cinema server. Private facility. Personal use after hours. DCP conversion via DCP-O-Matic which is top notch freeware. But, yes, too much space plus extremely long conversion time.

One issue with the other solutions is that there's not a sufficiently fast computer where I'd be using the backup.

As I said, my preference would be an exact duplicate backup copy. But I suppose the backup could be the feature alone as I'm not likely to need to view extras from the backup. But do any of these solutions address obfuscation or is that still an issue that needs to be solved separately?

What portion of new releases use obfuscation? Or is nearly everyone doing it now?

[dcoke22]

What portion of new releases use obfuscation? Or is nearly everyone doing it now?

It is generally only Lions Gate that seems to do obfuscation.

[MartyMcNuts]

Not DCP player software but a cinema server. Private facility. Personal use after hours. DCP conversion via DCP-O-Matic which is top notch freeware. But, yes, too much space plus extremely long conversion time.

One issue with the other solutions is that there's not a sufficiently fast computer where I'd be using the backup.

As I said, my preference would be an exact duplicate backup copy. But I suppose the backup could be the feature alone as I'm not likely to need to view extras from the backup. But do any of these solutions address obfuscation or is that still an issue that needs to be solved separately?

What portion of new releases use obfuscation? Or is nearly everyone doing it now?

As I said before, try ripping to a decrypted folder in MakeMKV then create an iso using Nero or ImgBurn. Write that iso to a BD-RE and test it in your player of choice. It would be about 60-90 minutes of your time and you will then know for sure, one way or the other, if this is what you want.