Ripping media with PS3

[Shifty Geezer]

Back in the day of Kutaragi, PS3 was going to not only rip movies, but 'mature' them via the global humanity-crushing Cell Network. What's the current state of play in that? Friend spent 700 minutes ripping a DVD to PSP via Something-or-Other Mobile. Ripping DVDs on a good dual-core Ahtlon 64 system also takes a long time. PS3 ought to excel at ripping, but it's something I don't recall anyone talking anything about. If you have a network storage solution, can you chuck a DVD in PS3 and rip at turbo-speed straight to it? Or would you have to rip to HDD and copy over manually somehow? Or just not even bother? And likewise what about CD ripping?

 

[Arwin]

CD Ripping is included by default, to various formats and bitrates, and is fairly quick, though probably limited by the speed of the drive if anything. That's all I know currently, though some things might change once the TV Tuner is released early 2008.

 

[-tkf-]

Back in the day of Kutaragi, PS3 was going to not only rip movies, but 'mature' them via the global humanity-crushing Cell Network. What's the current state of play in that? Friend spent 700 minutes ripping a DVD to PSP via Something-or-Other Mobile. Ripping DVDs on a good dual-core Ahtlon 64 system also takes a long time. PS3 ought to excel at ripping, but it's something I don't recall anyone talking anything about. If you have a network storage solution, can you chuck a DVD in PS3 and rip at turbo-speed straight to it? Or would you have to rip to HDD and copy over manually somehow? Or just not even bother? And likewise what about CD ripping?

I would love a DVD to AVC ripping function.

Only CD ripping is supported, it uses CDDB lookup and it rips to 160 Kbit AAC (can be adjusted if you want to)

 

[xatnys]

I would love a DVD to AVC ripping function.

I would be *extremely* interested in an optimized AVC encoder for Linux on Cell. Encoding HD material on this quad core takes some time; I'm curious as to how it would go on the PS3. There was/is a porting project on some Japanese blog for x264 but the results weren't exactly phenomenal.

 

[zed]

this is one area where sony have screwed up,
the cell is better than even the highest end $1000+ cpu at certain things. they should be pushing games that exploit this, imagine the PR value of a ps3->PC port + them needing to 'turn down' things to get it to run at a reasonable pace on the PC even on a quad core (until now the reverse is always the case).
the only major app i see for the ps3 which is 'folding' which is a success, conversly does sony want this, ie ive heard ppl buy a ps3, incurring a hardware $ loss, just to do folding, ie they wont be buying any games

 

[Shifty Geezer]

the only major app i see for the ps3 which is 'folding' which is a success, conversly does sony want this, ie ive heard ppl buy a ps3, incurring a hardware $ loss, just to do folding, ie they wont be buying any games

Not a hugely significant number. There's ~350,000 PS3's registered for folding, and you'd expect only a smallish percentage to be full time folders seeing as the percentage of active folding at any time is ~10% the same as other systems. That is, 44,000 are folding are the moment. If these are exclusively folders only, then that's only 44,000 out of 5 million PS3's...

The real issue here isn't so much using Cell's oomph, but providing a full feature set. PS3 is fantastically suited as a media device being so quiet, swish, and able to do such a good job of upscaling and decoding. It just falls short in a couple of major places though, as though Sony aren't willing to commit, and so it's worth as an all-in-one entertainment solution box is severely diminished. If you could rip DVDs to a storage, and do so very quickly as an added bonus, it'd be a viable solution for a Media PC. Without that it loses the principle point to a Media PC and can work only as a...media extender as it were, requiring the PC to do the hard part of ripping media. And if you want to do that quickly, you want a mammoth PC. Or if you want to just rip the DVDs as unchanged VOBs, fine. Storage is cheaper these days than processing power. But in our quick experiment PS3 didn't have any audio with the VOB playback, which makes even that no good.

The sad part is Sony pretty much left the serving of PSP media ripping to third parties, with their lousy and yet expensive software offering. The haven't demonstrated much commitment to enabling uses to store their media digitally.

 

[wco81]

Even if Sony didn't own a major movie studio, they probably wouldn't risk incurring the wrath of the MPAA by enabling DVD ripping.

 

[-tkf-]

If you could rip DVDs to a storage, and do so very quickly as an added bonus, it'd be a viable solution for a Media PC.

But is that not straight up illegal?

Besides ripping DVD´s to the PS3 can be done in several better and more space saving ways than just a straight copy that would fill the HD to fast.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No, it's not illegal! If it were illegal, all those companies selling ripping software would be closed down, and MS with 'em as they provide ripping software with their OS! Despite the crazy notions of the RIAA and MPAA who feel content pirates (which isn't the same as ripping stuff you have bought) should be treated for fiercely than dangerous drivers and burglars, you're allowed to duplicate the media you have bought for your personal use. DRM prevents us doing that, but DRM isn't an enforcement of the law as much a money-making scheme from the media companies to resell us everything.

 

[liuelson]

No, it's not illegal! If it were illegal, all those companies selling ripping software would be closed down, and MS with 'em as they provide ripping software with their OS! Despite the crazy notions of the RIAA and MPAA who feel content pirates (which isn't the same as ripping stuff you have bought) should be treated for fiercely than dangerous drivers and burglars, you're allowed to duplicate the media you have bought for your personal use. DRM prevents us doing that, but DRM isn't an enforcement of the law as much a money-making scheme from the media companies to resell us everything.

I thought the DMCA explicitly forbade compromising DRM? Thus, although one could argue that making a personal, archival copy of a DVD that one has purchased is fair use, breaking the DRM to make that copy would be illegal.

 

[-tkf-]

No, it's not illegal! If it were illegal, all those companies selling ripping software would be closed down, and MS with 'em as they provide ripping software with their OS! Despite the crazy notions of the RIAA and MPAA who feel content pirates (which isn't the same as ripping stuff you have bought) should be treated for fiercely than dangerous drivers and burglars, you're allowed to duplicate the media you have bought for your personal use. DRM prevents us doing that, but DRM isn't an enforcement of the law as much a money-making scheme from the media companies to resell us everything.

Who from RIAA or MPAA really cares about the law? several of the "ripping firms" have been sued. The makers of DVD X Copy had to shut down mostly because they couldnt afford to defend themselves (they lost several cases as well but i think they ran out of money to keep on appealing).

I never used a commercial product but i wouldn´t be surprised if they weren´t operating from the USA.

So.. Sony or Microsoft or well anyone putting a DVD ripping tool in anything is not very likely. The only DVD copied i have seen has been a DVD Recorders with Build in Harddrives and they simple play the DVD and encode it again.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well, I was thinking of Europe primarily as not affected by Extreme Copyright Laws, but a bit of investigation reveals that it's getting confused over here too. Apparently it's illegal for people to copy their CDs onto their PCs or iPods in the UK, which makes Apple and Microsoft 'Evil Scum'. Whereas other countries let people do what they like. Suffice to say, the legal status seems unclear to anyone (outside of the US where it's illegal to even look at a DVD cover without paying licensing fees to the DVD company...). From that perspective I can see Sony and anyone else would be very cagey about including DVD ripping functions. Although that's no different in principle to CD ripping which they allow.

 

[MJP]

Well as I understand it, there's a very big difference between ripping a DVD and decoding a DVD. Decoding your average movie DVD means breaking the CSS encryption, which I believe is the big sticking point in the US under the DMCA. In fact for a long time I used to use one specific app to decode a DVD, then another to actually rip the content and encode to MPEG4.

 

[mrcorbo]

Well, I was thinking of Europe primarily as not affected by Extreme Copyright Laws, but a bit of investigation reveals that it's getting confused over here too. Apparently it's illegal for people to copy their CDs onto their PCs or iPods in the UK, which makes Apple and Microsoft 'Evil Scum'. Whereas other countries let people do what they like. Suffice to say, the legal status seems unclear to anyone (outside of the US where it's illegal to even look at a DVD cover without paying licensing fees to the DVD company...). From that perspective I can see Sony and anyone else would be very cagey about including DVD ripping functions. Although that's no different in principle to CD ripping which they allow.

You are not really weighing in the fact that Sony as a content owner is one of the companies that is pushing for restrictive DRM in the first place. They have actually created and continually developed new versions of a technology (ARccOS) that specifically tries to prevent DVD ripping. There is no chance of this functionality ever making it into the PS3.

 

[inefficient]

You are not really weighing in the fact that Sony as a content owner is one of the companies that is pushing for restrictive DRM in the first place. They have actually created and continually developed new versions of a technology (ARccOS) that specifically tries to prevent DVD ripping. There is no chance of this functionality ever making it into the PS3.

You seem to miss understand what DRM means.

DRM does not mean end users cannot legally rip DVDs or CDs. It's not about that. It's just about giving the content owners more control over how you they allow their customers to use their data.

A well designed DRM system would complement this function of ripping DVDs to your PCs/PS3/Whathaveyou. It's not an obstacle to it. Basically you need to make the artists, studio's and content owners feel safe. Otherwise they will not want to participate in this venture.

Read up on Managed Copy that is supported by both HDDVD and Bluray.
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_managed_copy

Will Blu-ray support mandatory managed copy?


Yes, mandatory managed copy (MMC) will be part of the Blu-ray format. This feature will enable consumers to make legal copies of their Blu-ray movies that can be transferred over a home network. Please note that "mandatory" refers to the movies having to offer this capability, while it will be up to each hardware manufacturer to decide if they want to support this feature.

 

[AlphaWolf]

A well designed DRM system would complement this function of ripping DVDs to your PCs/PS3/Whathaveyou. It's not an obstacle to it. Basically you need to make the artists, studio's and content owners feel safe. Otherwise they will not want to participate in this venture.

Every media provider would rather it were impossible for you to copy their products in any way shape or form and they will often do whatever is necessary to make this happen, often going to such measures as to prevent the product from actually working at its intended use.

 

[StefanS]

Well, I was thinking of Europe primarily as not affected by Extreme Copyright Laws, but a bit of investigation reveals that it's getting confused over here too. Apparently it's illegal for people to copy their CDs onto their PCs or iPods in the UK, which makes Apple and Microsoft 'Evil Scum'. Whereas other countries let people do what they like. Suffice to say, the legal status seems unclear to anyone (outside of the US where it's illegal to even look at a DVD cover without paying licensing fees to the DVD company...). From that perspective I can see Sony and anyone else would be very cagey about including DVD ripping functions. Although that's no different in principle to CD ripping which they allow.

Yep, you missed out on a lot of legislation that has been passed in the last few years. E.g.: it's illegal in Germany to break the protection mechanisms; i.e. you're only allowed to rip media that is not copy-protected (though you're allowed to make an analogue copy, i.e. tape, etc.). Also software allowing you to break those "safeguards" have been either crippled or removed from the shelves like CloneCD, etc. It's also one of the reasons why newer EAC versions don't support the techniques necessary for ripping / copying from copy protected CDs.

 

[mrcorbo]

You seem to miss understand what DRM means.

DRM does not mean end users cannot legally rip DVDs or CDs. It's not about that. It's just about giving the content owners more control over how you they allow their customers to use their data.

A well designed DRM system would complement this function of ripping DVDs to your PCs/PS3/Whathaveyou. It's not an obstacle to it. Basically you need to make the artists, studio's and content owners feel safe. Otherwise they will not want to participate in this venture.

Read up on Managed Copy that is supported by both HDDVD and Bluray.
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_managed_copy

If it seems I don't know what DRM is then allow me to clear that up.

Neither a well-designed or poorly-designed DRM system would allow for ripping DVDs. It's illegal. That format has no DRM at all, it just has plain old copy protection. My comments WRT DRM are simply to point out that Sony's interests (for business reasons) are in conflict with the consumer's when it comes to use of media.

I would expect that managed copy on both HD DVD and Bluray is going to fit under the category of "restrictive DRM" since the content owners are the ones who are ultimately going to decide which uses are acceptable, not the consumer.

I'm not some anti-DRM zealot and I can appreciate the need for content owners to protect their IP. I would welcome a system that allows for reasonable fair-use while protecting those interests, as well. Unfortunately, the content owners hold all the cards and so far the restrictions that they have imposed have been very consumer-unfriendly. The fact that a large portion of the HTPC crowd have to bypass AACS just to get proper HD disk playback on their setups is one example of this.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Interestingly, I was looking at the Live Free of Die Hard DVD at the store the other day and they include digital versions for use on iPods, etc. I really like that kind of thing. It's like how lots of indie record labels will include MP3 download codes with their vinyl releases. I'm set up to rip my own vinyl, but that's a great convenience for me and eve better for those without the right setup.

 

[Betanumerical]

I would be *extremely* interested in an optimized AVC encoder for Linux on Cell. Encoding HD material on this quad core takes some time; I'm curious as to how it would go on the PS3. There was/is a porting project on some Japanese blog for x264 but the results weren't exactly phenomenal.

It exists, I found one (on sourceforge) when I was hunting around for H264 decoder (ffmpeg?) for Cell.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cell-h264/

I think its the same code/program from the IBM challenge.