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2009-07-22, 09:53
Hi all,
Can you check for DRM in the movie or song you're about to play, then pop up an error instead of trying to play it?
At the moment, xbmc will try to play the file, looking like it's corrupted and in my mate's eye, like the system is faulty.
I want to take this perception away from him.
I know the obvious solution is to just not play DRM files, but some people don't have the time or inclination to work that out.
Cheers,
Pete
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spiff
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hell no are we making life more convenient for ppl that have bought drm'd media. you deserve all you have coming to you
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well grumped up and utterly useless at the same time.
I do not have DRM media, my mate has some and he's not sure what's what. So instead of him thinking XBMC is a piece of garbage (he's grumpy too), I want it to show that it's DRM.
It's about making XBMC look good, not punishing people who have bought DRM media.
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I suspect we don't even know whether it's DRM'd or not.
Do some research and see whether anything can tell the difference. If it can't, you have your answer.
I'd be more than happy to throw a dialog up in order to educate people of the evil that is DRM.
Cheers,
Jonathan
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spiff
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who's fucking useless here? i haven't seen a single patch from you, now have i. ffs
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spiff
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what's useless about it? it's my honest opinion.
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Spliff, you were unnecessarily hostile in a help forum when a simple and polite question was being asked.
I have now found the answer - The only way you can tell if a file has DRM is if you can play it. Not if you can't. On a Mac, Quicktime will ask for your iTunes username and password so it can then play a file if it detects the DRM but this requires the algorithm so it knows what to look for.
XBMC will only see DRM files as corrupted files and will persist to try to play them, potentially crashing the system as my mate's copy of The Hulk did to mine when I was trying to work this out.
So we have 2 potential issues here, bad perception and crashed systems, both of which are minor or very major depending on your viewpoint and there may be one (possibly simple, I don't know) fix for both of them: Quickly scan the files for 'corruption' during library import.
I know that not everybody uses library mode, but most people who are likely to have DRM stuff and not know it will be drawn to the simplicity of that mode. It will also alert these people to the issue with their file before they try to play it, thus avoiding them thinking this fine product is a piece of garbage.
Is this possible?
Cheers,
Pete
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spiff
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the everlasting problem of people confusing my bluntness with hostility i see.
we shouldn't crash on corrupt files in general, drm or not. personally, again, my OPINION, is that we shouldn't do jack to make drm'd files appear as anything other than what they are - corrupt.
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OK... and while I'm 100% against DRM myself, I'm a realist and can see this having potential to scare people away from XBMC.
My mate is already having 2nd thoughts about it because of one experience.
I'm not suggesting we pander to DRM, but how about stopping XBMC from even importing DRM files in the first place? Then you don't have users thinking this system is crap because the movie plays fine on their Mac or AppleTV or Windows or whatever.
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As I said earlier: Identify a method by which we can know if a file has DRM, and someone will be happy to implement a dialog informing the user of the fact.
The method of detection is very likely dependent on the type of DRM implemented, and may well be non-trivial - I have no idea, as I've never investigated it.
What we need is someone to investigate it. The team doesn't have time (and doesn't have any DRM'd material would be my guess).
Cheers,
Jonathan
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2009-07-24, 00:00
(This post was last modified: 2009-07-24, 00:01 by jdhoover.)
I don't have enough DRM files to check this very well, but I did a hexdump on some m4v files, all of which are from the Apple iTunes Store. Some have DRM, and some don't. One thing that seemed consistent between the files with and without DRM was at the following location in the files.
drm-none2.txt:0000090 0000 0400 0100 6a4e 7274 6b61 0000 5c00
drm-none3.txt:0000090 0000 0400 0100 ca44 7274 6b61 0000 5c00
drm-none4.txt:0000090 0000 0400 0100 1266 7274 6b61 0000 5c00
drm-none.txt:0000090 0000 0400 0100 9639 7274 6b61 0000 5c00
drm-yes2.txt:0000090 0000 0400 0000 2ae8 7274 6b61 0000 5c00
drm-yes.txt:0000090 0000 0400 0000 16bd 7274 6b61 0000 5c00
That third column, seems to have "0100" in the files without DRM, and a "0000" in the files with DRM. Of course, this is definitely not a large enough sample to confirm if this is the case with all DRM m4v files from Apple, may not apply to audio only (these were videos), and doesn't help with any other DRM technologies out there. But, maybe the idea of hexdump'ing some DRM vs non-DRM files and piping it through "head" and doing a diff might be of some use for someone with a lot of time on their hands.
