PROBLEM DISC: Various Hollywood pre-release 'consideration' discs

[smashingly]

Hi,

I work on a luxury yacht as the AV/IT guy. We have on board currently a large media mogul who runs one or two movie studios. He gets a lot of pre-release "for your consideration" type Academy screener DVDs, for review, promo, awards judging etc. The problem is that almost none of them will import into his Kaleidescape system at his residence. He's asked me about it and given me a bag of these DVDs to test on our K system on board - same issue here... 99% of the time, you put in the disc and it doesn't even acknowledge that there's a disc in there. The other 1% of the time the disc name may be recognised but the system will fail import saying "DVD Cannot be imported" on the web admin Import page. These DVDs play fine on any player, most of them aren't region-coded.

Obviously it's frustrating for a producer to not be able to put these on his system. I'm just wondering if there's a flag on these DVDs which the movie studio sets, which prevents systems like Kaleidescape from importing (or even recognising that there's a disc there). ??

I've emailed Kaleidescape support about this but received no response yet. Obviously it's unfair that this guy does physically possess the discs, but can't load them into his K system.

I can see the logic of content owners/producers wanting to prevent pre-release screeners from ever reaching the public, and I support their right to do so (besides, they're all watermarked with my boss's initials in the top right corner of the screen, in some cases in the centre of the picture, along with 'for your consideration only' type messages). But in this case it's a legitimate use of the system and technically speaking I can't figure out how this is happening. There does not appear to be any hardcore copy protection on the discs - as a test, I effortlessly ripped one earlier, reburned it to DVD-R and happily imported it into our K system. No fake bad sectors, no RCE, etc. (and no, rip then re-burn isn't a solution the owner is willing to entertain, he wants it to be plug 'n' play, the way Kaleidescape is designed to be...)

Anyone have any experience of this? Any suggestions?

thx in advance.....

 

[cinelife]

Like your boss, I've also had my share of these pre-release movies and I can confirm, as you noted, they will not import. They are not recognized at all. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the disks are "incomplete" in some sense (coding???), and this confuses the system.

I know that's not an answer, but it is my experience with these movies, the last being The Green Hornet.


Jim

 

[digitalvd]

Hey,

the same in Germany with press-releases. Sometimes without cover, so they cannot be processed by K. ("loan program" guidelines)

Best,

Patrick

 

[cinelife]

Just to be clear, the copies I've received were given to me to keep. The only restrictions are not passing the copy to anyone else and not having the neighborhood over for a showing until after it leaves the theatres. In any case, I only get movies from a couple of Producer friends, so I don't have many.


Jim

 

[JerryL]

Will these movies even play in the player?

Do they work in a regular DVD player?

 

[cinelife]

Will these movies even play in the player?

Do they work in a regular DVD player?

Yes, they work in standard DVD players (they are not BR copies), did not try from the KPlayer tray, I'll try later today just to see if it works (I suspect it will). I'm not even sure they are copy protected, which would be strange (by agreement, never tried to copy one). (I only have a few of these, as some were required to be returned).


Jim

 

[smashingly]

Hi,

I've played them all in regular DVD players just fine. Most of them show up in utilities like MacTheRipper as RPC Region 1 2 3 4 5 6 (one of them even said 7 and 8). They rip very easily without any issues at all. I only tried ripping one, as part of troubleshooting this issue, because I'd hoped MacTheRipper would give me some indication of some weirdness about the DVD. But no, I can't see anything different about it compared to other discs.

They are from different film studios - all the big names you can think of - and from the ones I've watched, they are authored & pressed/printed in different styles so I would say the disc pressing company is not the same across all the discs I tried. I think there is some flag in the disc data which trips up K-Players.

Problem is, it's a bit hard to send a pre-release 'for your eyes only' disc, watermarked with my boss's initials, to Kaleidescape, for them to examine it. Not that I don't specifically trust Kaleidescape but all it would take is an errant postal worker or employee to leak that movie out and it would damage my boss's reputation if/when that movie started showing up on Torrent sites with his initials burned into the picture. I would get into trouble too. It's a tiny risk (especially given the number of DVDs they already receive from customers, and are entrusted with) - perhaps I could just wait a few months then send in an old pre-release screener which has already come out on DVD by then. I don't mean to sound suspicious of Kaleidescape or anyone - it's nothing to do with level of risk, which is probably very low - it's simply the consequences to me and my boss IF that happened. <over-explaining mode OFF> ;-) At the end of the day, this might be the only way to reach some progress with resolving the issue.

I need some sort of utility which can really delve into the bit-stream at the start of the disc - and preferably decode what all of it means, in terms of flags, data, etc - and I could then send that data to Kaleidescape without any of the above risk. I'm sure they'd be very obliging in analysing the disc and telling me what the issue is.

 

[cinelife]

Well, one thing is for certain, K will never assist any of us in importing content that is outside the scope of their licensing agreements, and although never confirmed, that may include the type of movies being discussed here, perhaps for ethical reasons if not licensing restrictions (I know in my case several movies were given to me to permanently own, but came with a "please do not copy this movie" restriction). I have not attempted to load these into my system because that would indeed be "copying" the movie. Besides, you normally only have to wait a few months or so to purchase a BR copy.


Jim

 

[smashingly]

True, but in this case the screeners are directly given to my boss and in many cases it's his own movie studio who released the film.

But K may want to just stand clear of the legality of that as it can't easily be verified - these screeners don't have a UPC and you obviously can't produce proof of purchase etc so they might just want to stand well the heck clear!

BUT... if the inability to play the disc was down to some little bit or data flag on the disc which K'scape weren't previously aware existed, and therefore didn't know how to handle, then perhaps it wouldn't be a legal issue at all, it would be a technical tweak. It all depends on whether the inability to play/import the disc is due to an agreed method to prevent duplication (which I doubt, since they're multi-region and easy to rip using freeware - why go to the trouble of making them K-player-proof, when importing them into a K system is actually pretty harmless since it's a closed system that you can't use to duplicate movies illicitly...

Anyway this is all conjecture... we need Kaleidescape to weigh in. I'm going to do some reading on the UDF standard and see if I can't have a look at a disc at byte-level to see if there's something special about these discs. At the end of the day we have wealthy connected influential K-scape customers who can't use discs they possess in their expensive K-scape systems....

 

[cinelife]

Agreed, and I'm sure there are ownership differences amongst those in possession of these movies (in my case just a friend end user, unlike your boss) which dictates how the movie can be used.

Would be interesting to hear K's take on this subject.


Jim

 

[JDS]

If a Movie Mogal is trying to import an encrypted disc and it is being rejected by the K system I expect it is because it does not comply with the movie industries own licensing requirements.

Is this a case of a senior member of the movie industry encouraging an installer to circumvent the industries own restrictions on DVD importing. I wonder if the DVD CCA is reading this ?

Perhaps the Movie Studio is obeying industry rules in not providing a copy of one of its own movies in an unencrypted form that may be imported in the same manner as a home movie to its own studio head.

"Wealthy, connected, influential..." Vision of waking up next to a severed horses head!

Does not the solution to this issue rest with the movie studio and not Kaleidescape?

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

True, but in this case the screeners are directly given to my boss and in many cases it's his own movie studio who released the film.

But K may want to just stand clear of the legality of that as it can't easily be verified - these screeners don't have a UPC and you obviously can't produce proof of purchase etc so they might just want to stand well the heck clear!

BUT... if the inability to play the disc was down to some little bit or data flag on the disc which K'scape weren't previously aware existed, and therefore didn't know how to handle, then perhaps it wouldn't be a legal issue at all, it would be a technical tweak. It all depends on whether the inability to play/import the disc is due to an agreed method to prevent duplication (which I doubt, since they're multi-region and easy to rip using freeware - why go to the trouble of making them K-player-proof, when importing them into a K system is actually pretty harmless since it's a closed system that you can't use to duplicate movies illicitly...

This can't be a flag issue that Kaleidescape is agreeing to not import or Hollywood would just put that flag on 100% of the DVDs it ships. After all, these discs still play in all the DVD players people try them in.

Also, the lack of a UPC code doesn't mean Kaleidescape won't be able to verify purchase or you wouldn't be able to load home movies.

This likely is a technical authoring error that is preventing import much the way they sometimes have problem discs that won't load for some reason until Kaleidescape "fixes" the issue which mainly consists of telling the system that if disc X is importing, skip sectors Y & Z because they are known to be purposely bad to prevent successful rips.

Since he has legal access to the content, he falls into the scope of the license agreement and would be able to load that content onto his system.

 

[smashingly]

Well, the way I see it is this: K-system owner has some discs which won't import, and he wants to know why. K's support obligation is to help figure out why. During the 'why' process it would be determined if it's a legal issue for K'scape or if it's a technical issue.

I'm progressing it as a support case with them but also notified them of the URL of this thread to demonstrate that there are other users with the same issue. I'll keep you all posted with progress but I suspect it will all come down to my ability (or inability) to send a sample disc to K'scape for analysis.

 

[josh]

True, but in this case the screeners are directly given to my boss and in many cases it's his own movie studio who released the film.

Actually, this sounds very easy to resolve if the DVDs are coming from your boss's own studio and he's the CEO or a top exec. He needs to have someone there author him a non-protected DVD-R, which they'd probably do for their CEO. He (or you) can then import it just the way you'd do a home movie... and add the metadata yourself to make it work just like a "real" DVD.

As for movies he's been given from other studios, if the studios went to the trouble to copy-protect the DVDs, then he's out of luck on Kaleidescape. I suspect, as has been pointed out, that Kaleidescape will not help resolve this.

I do happen to be curious if they play via the "play from DVD tray" command, however.

--josh