Digital Linear Tape

A

andybiz_2005

Well-known member
Hi,

I have shot a lot of wedding & corporate DVDs for my clients. I would like to copy-protect those DVDs so that not just anyone can quickly duplicate a copy of the DVDs. I heard that digital linear tapes allow the owner to protect their DVDs from being pirated.

Can anyone explain to me what actually is a digital linear tape & how to use for copy protection? How much does purchasing this DLT cost? Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Andrew
 
This thread might be a candidate for being moved...

I don't think you want to mess with DLT unless you are making large quantity replications.

DLT is a storage cassette that some DVD authoring programs can master to. You would need a DLT drive and a SCSI interface. Your authoring program would write the data to the tape instead of onto a DVD. Then you send the DLTs to a replicator and they tranfer the data to DVDs. It is the very best way to insure that your DVD will be readable by all DVD players. Replicating from a DLT does offer some extra options for copy protection, like CSS and Macrovision.

If you are doing copy protection for small runs, there are other options. What DVD authoring program are you using?
 
DLT is too expencive for making small quantities replications.
There's no bulletproof copy protection as far as I know.
I heard something about physical damage to DVD (drilling a very small hole to certain point)...readable for DVD player but you can't copy anything. Never tried however.
mjmcneese2...what are these "other options" for DVDit Pro or DVD Producer for example?
 
I'm not sure about either DVDit or DVD Producer, but most 'Pro' DVD authoring applications should allow you to include CSS with a disc build. I'm mostly familiar with DVDSP, and it has CSS and Macrovision. What that will do is it will detect when a disc is being played to a recording device, and it will scramble the image.

Thing is, there are ways around all copy protections right now. Andy, it sounds like you wanna just make the discs un-copy-able so that when you hand a disc to a bride, she doesn't make dozens of copies for friends and family, right? Adding CSS or Macrovision should help immensly - just check your authoring software for those options. Otherwise, you may want to just charge the client for a 'Master Fee' and let them mess with making copies if they want to - I did that once and the client came back and just had me make the copies for them...at a small fee, of course.
 
Thanks so very much all of you for your really insightful comments. That really helped me clear up my doubt on DLT. I guess, for a small SOHO like mine, DLT is out of the question.
 
You can use CSS or Macrovision protection only when writing to DLT.
These protections are applied by disc replicator. Consumer level DVD recorders can't write protected discs.
About CGMS (copy guard management system)...many DVD players do not respect these discs.
 
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