What's PathPlayer?
PathPlayer enables DVDFab to copy DVD content only allowed to be played on a real DVD player. In this way, DVDFab will ignore unplayable content which may contain copy protection.
How PathPlayer works?
PathPlayer works like a real DVD player, which scans every play path of a given DVD, checking everything that you can access on a DVD player with a remote controller. DVDFab can know all the content that a real DVD player will read as soon as Pathplayer finishes its job. DVDFab will neglect the copy protections in the unplayable DVD contents during the copy process.
Disable PathPlayer
Disable Pathplayer when the disc to be copied is confirmed non-protected to save the time that Paphplayer may require on scanning the disc.
Enable PathPlayer when necessary
Generally, Pathplayer will be enabled while loading a DVD. Once a reading error is detected while copying DVD, restarting DVDFab to reload the DVD with PathPlayer on would be necessary. If the reading error continues to occur or the error message lasts beyond one minute or two, DVDFab will shift to the default ("Always Enable") option to save time.
Always Enable PathPlayer (Default)
The benefits of this option are the facts that the performance of Pathplayer is enhanced and the scanning time decreased considerably. By enabling this option, DVDFab can get the most information about the disc to be copied and will usually produce a better, more reliable backup copy. Anyway, users can still set the other two options (above) if desired. PathPlayer must be enabled in “Full Disc” mode, when "Jump To..." function is called up.
Scan BOVs (Button over Video)
Button over Video (BOV) is a feature increasingly seen on recent DVDs. The purpose of BOV is basically to make a transition from the main movie to some extras that are in other VTS. One good example is the white rabbit feature in The Matrix. Other examples are Bambi II, Stuart Little 2, Spiderman and Men in Black II.
Scan cells lasting less than # seconds
DVDFab scans the title VOBSs for BOVs. To speed things up and not waste time scanning parts of the VOB that are unlikely to contain buttons, DVDFab only scans cells that are of small to average duration. The preferences allow you to adjust the maximum duration of cells which will be scanned for BOVs.
Default value is '300', which is a cell time of 5 minutes.
Scan one VOBU every # VOBUs
Set it to 1 to scan every VOBU in the selected cells (slowest but safest). Set it to a higher number to by-pass some VOBUs within a cell. In any event, for safety, the first and last VOBU of every cell in the VTS is scanned.
Our tests show the default setting of 30 is reasonable. At this setting, the first VOBU is scanned, then 30 are missed, then another is scanned, then another 30 are by-passed, until the cell ends, at which time the last VOBU is scanned.
Default value is '30', which is about 15 seconds of video.
Multiple BOVs:
This checkbox option (see screen capture below) tells PathPlayer to check for additional BOVs when it finds one set in a cell. This is found only rarely on certain discs for unusual features (like Easter eggs). This deeper analysis takes additional time, so the default is unchecked for faster PathPlayer analysis. You can enable the feature by checking the box if you think there are features like this on your disc.
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Sidenote: If you think your disc may have Easter eggs or similar features that use multiple BOVs, in addition to the checkbox you may also want to adjust the PathPlayer sliders (see above) for cell time (longer) and VOBU scanning (skip fewer) to increase the probability of finding them all.