Broken DVDs

Today I got another broken DVD. It is the special edition of The Shawshank Redemption. It is rather new and libdvdread just chokes on it. At least the old one does, while the version in sid is able to read them, thanks to a small patch.

The DVD exploits a feature of the standard. The filesystem on it (UDF) provides a size for the info files (VTS_XX_0.IFO) and the corresponding backup file (VTS_XX_0.BUP). This sizes are void, only the offsets within the files matters. The sizes are just too small and libdvdread checked that while reading them.

Thanks to the patch, libdvdread now updates its internal knowledge while parsing the file. With the fix it is possible to play the DVD, at least with mplayer. But I want to play it on my machine without optical drive. I used dvdbackup to read other DVDs but it simply failed this time.

This DVD also have broken backup files. They have different sizes, sometimes they even look empty, and contents than the real ones. With the corrent amount of force (just ignoring them) and some magic (#467075) dvdbackup copies something to disk which is playable with mplayer (libdvdread) and totem (libdvdnav).

Okay, nothing is complete. This DVD contains another title set which seems to be never referenced. It have a completely bogus info file and a 1GB menu VOB.

As I have a copy now, I'm away, watching a really great movie.