Hi All,
I am fairly new at all this and would like to know how to protect my work.
Is there any way of copyright protecting a DVD within a normal PC environment?
I am using Studio Pinnacle 12 Ultimate.

Many thanks

I BELIEVE that Macrovision encoding can only be added to pressed DVDs at factories that have the licensed capabilities to do so, and doing so costs you a license fee. As well as a minimum pressing of 500 units. I don't believe burned DVDs can be Macrovision encoded.

shaun is right

Thanks guys.
Also read some older posts on this and it does not seem like a worthwhile proposition.

I did a church function some time ago and one of the youngsters grabbed one of my finished DVD's and said to his buddies "Dont buy this I will copy it for you" . I suppose this is something i will have to learn to live with.

Greg - one way is to use double layer blanks. Say your film's 20 mins long. You make your timeline 3 hours long, and have the last 2 hrs 40 mins pure black. You encode it to fill both layers of the DVD.

Anyone who plays your DVD will simply see the film. Anyone who tries to copy your film onto nornal DVD-R will hit a big problem - it mysteriously won't fit.

Of course the filmmakers amongst them will twig, but the youngsters will simply give up.

tom.

Great idea Tom. Filed away (in my head) and I'm sure that will be useful for me at some point! Thanks!

Greg - one way is to use double layer blanks. Say your film's 20 mins long. You make your timeline 3 hours long, and have the last 2 hrs 40 mins pure black. You encode it to fill both layers of the DVD.


I am actually contemplating that very idea, although I have about 2.5 hours of footage so I was gonna use 1 DL and 1 SL. But, at the same time, there are two other posts in this forum about the problems of DL and compatability with Clients players.

I'm shooting an end-of-year recital, so I hate to think of a parent making 34 copies for everyone else, but on the other hand, the parents won't see each other much more to contemplate copying my for-sale work. But then I don't want 35 coasters either.

Of course the filmmakers amongst them will twig, but the youngsters will simply give up.I think the opposite is true. The youngsters will simply find another piece of free software that will let them easily copy it. DVD Shrink comes to mind - it's free and it makes duplicating a DL DVD-R to a single layer DVD-R fast and easy.

Anyone who plays your DVD will simply see the film. Anyone who tries to copy your film onto nornal DVD-R will hit a big problem - it mysteriously won't fit.

This will only stump complete amateurs. There is a solution that I'm aware of (and won't go into here - HONEST: I only use my "superpowers" for good and not for evil...) that would get around this automatically and quickly. Oh, and the solution is completely legal, even if the applications one may use it for are questionable.