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, . 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 :

Code: Select all

$ 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.