Yes it’s true, it really is a backup copy. A few years ago I purchased the Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Training DVD and watched it maybe once. Well, I actually had a need to watch it often as I am doing Sound Design on a daily basis for an Xbox 360 game. I need to refer to this DVD often as Kontakt is a great tool for Sound Design. Well, it just so happens that my laptop is built in such a way that I can’t have my data drive and DVD drive in at the same time since they both are using the same Drive slot. It’s a weird setup and it can be a real pain in the ass to take out my D: drive and put in a DVD drive and vice versa. Especially when I need to access the data from my D: drive and play the DVD at the same time. I mean come on, this s a training DVD. External DVD drives are ok but again I am on a laptop and I need to be mobile.
“I paid For this DVD and I want to watch it”
from my hard drive while I am on the go. Well, after copying my files to an external drive and then putting them on the D: drive after I took out the DVD I realized that this training DVD won’t play unless the actual DVD disk is in the drive physically. Why? Why? Why? I’m sure that Native Instruments is just trying to make sure that the DVD get’s pirated. I can understand that, but when your paying customers suffer then you have a problem.
Well, the “Start.exe” on this training DVD must have either had the encryption key built in or something because I could not get it to play from a hard drive unless the DVD disk was in. For me this was really frustrating since I paid for this DVD and had issues having a hard drive and DVD in at the same time. Well, I figured I guess I’ll just play the DVD and record the screen and save it as an MPEG-2 file. This at first seemed to work until the DVD glitches occurred every few minutes. YEAY! I have a DVD that won’t even play right when in the DVD drive and I can’t play it from the hard drive and when my DVD is in I have no D: drive. Not the best situation since this was no regular DVD. It’s not the kind of disk that plays in your DVD player on your TV, so having a TV next to me wouldn’t work either. Not to mention I have a laptop which is meant to be portable.
Anyways, I could go on and on about this and how I as a paying customer I am the one who gets to suffer from all the disk encryptions and copyright protections. I could even write and entire blog post about how insanely retarded companies are for making dongles. They can suck my dongle! LOL! Moving right along, screen recording had the glitch that the DVD had and even the screen recording was shitty. So that kind of worked out but man, come on Native Instruments! I paid for this DVD and I can’t watch it from my hard drive without the disk being inserted? Well, I had another idea!!!! What If I made a drive image like an .ISO and mounted it to Virtual Drive? Ok, I thought this will work. Well, to my dismay it did not. In fact many Disk drive copy protection systems check for this. The copyright protection on the disk say
“Emulator Detected!”
. Ahh wow, now I know they are bending over backwards to suck their own dongle. Well, I must be shit out of luck right? I should just quit now right?
Nope. No Way. I am very persistent and usually will not stop until I find a solution. After some research and many attempts to make a working backup copy I found a real working solution. I found that you can’t just make any disk image and mount it to a virtual drive. You have to actually detect the security encryption (SafeDisk, SecuROM, etc.. etc...) and insert it into the DVD image while it creates the image. What this does is it still retains the security encryption but it embeds it right into the disk image itself. One application that will do this for you is Alcohol 120% and it worked well. I was very excited that I finally got it to work. It’s not really that significant except that I solved a major problem that should not have been a problem in the first place. I personally think that paying customers are the ones who get the shaft. It happens all the time, for instance the WAVES VST plug-ins. They really like to make their paying customers suffer. Or how about Steinberg? Even worse, their dongles keys break the first week. And if you lose your key, well you basically lost the app and can never get it back again. That’s seriously retarded! I know this because we actually use legit versions of these programs and because of their security encryption it takes 5++ minutes to load them as they check to see if the Syncrosoft and iLok devices have the correct licensing. Are you kidding me? 5++ minutes to load an application! These people should realize they are only hurting their paying customers. I have learned of some things to make them load faster but come on.
Why don’t they think about those who keep them in business – THE CUSTOMERS!
Here are my steps to get the Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Training DVD to play from my D: drive that again I did paid for:
Remember this is strictly for backup purposes only!
1. Insert Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Training DVD Training DVD
2. Open Alcohol 120%
3. Choose “Image Burning Wizard”
4. Choose “SecuROM” or whatever the disk encryption is from the “Datatype” drop down menu in the bottom left.
5. Choose output destination
6. Click “Start” to burn image ( This will create two files a .mds and a .mdf )
7. Right click the image and “Mount Image”
8. Access your files and movies as if the real disk was there ONLY IT ACTUALLY WORKS WITH ENCRYPTED DISKS!!!!!
Now after I mount the .mds image it shows up like a DVD drive and I can run my Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Training DVD and the copy protection thinks it is actually the real DVD disk. I never have to remove and swap out hard drives to watch and save etc.. etc.. as I can now have my paid version of the DVD play from the hard drive and I can also access my data files at the same time. Oh yeah, what good is an Audio Training DVD if the drive your swapping out has all your sounds and Data? Now it all works and I am happy. But this would not have been possible without Alcohol 120%. I never realized the difference in Disk Image Makers and Virtual Drive Emulators until now. Alcohol 120% actually burned the disk encryption right into the Image file.
“Data Position Measurement: New protections like SecuROM 4.8x work by positioning the data irregularly on the spiral track of the CD. This irregular positioning is measured, and emulated while the image is mounted.
Please Note: Data Position Measurement is only used with the "Securom *NEW (4.x/5.x)", "StarForce 1/2/3" and "VOB ProtectCD V5" datatypes. The best results are obtained when the DPM reading speed is kept as low as possible.
Datatype: You have to make sure what kind of datatype the source CD is, and select the correct datatype. If you are not sure which datatype your source CD is, you can find detection software on the Internet. Another powerful source of information is our Support Forum at: http://forum.alcohol-soft.com.”
Alcohol 120%
Alcohol 120% is an optical disc authoring program and disk image emulator created by Alcohol Soft. Alcohol 120% began as a direct continuation of the defunct Fantom CD CD-ROM drive emulation software.[citation needed]
Alcohol 120% can also mount disc images, with support for their proprietary Media Descriptor Image (.mds/.mdf) disc image format.
http://support.alcohol-soft.com/en/documentation/english/index.html?ibw.htm
