PathPlayer
What's PathPlayer?
PathPlayer gives DVDFab the ability 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, it follows every play path of a DVD, checking everything that you can access on a DVD player with a remote controller. When PathPlayer finishes, DVDFab can know all the content that a real DVD player will read. The copy protection exists in the unplayable DVD content, DVDFab will not read it when copying.
Disable PathPlayer
Since PathPlayer may need several minutes to open a DVD, if you know the disc is not copy protected, you can disable it to save time.
Enable PathPlayer when necessary
DVDFab will not enable PathPlayer in normal cases when opening a DVD. Once DVDFab detects a reading error when copying DVD, it will ask user to restart DVDFab to reopen the DVD using PathPlayer. In this way, DVDFab has the ability of opening DVD as fast as before, and uses PathPlayer when really necessary. If the reading error is encountered more than a minute or two into the copy process it will save time to use the default ("Always Enable") option below.
Always Enable PathPlayer (Default)
Improvements in PathPlayer and reductions in the scanning time have allowed this to become the default option. This option gives DVDFab the most information about your DVD and will usually result in a better, more reliable backup copy. You can still set the other two options (above) if desired. PathPlayer must be in “Full Disc” mode for the "Jump To..." navigation features to be active.
Scan BOVs (Button Over Video)
Button Over Video (BOV) is a feature seen more and more on recent DVDs. The purpose of BOV is basically to make a transition from your main movie to some extra that is in another 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 unckecked for faster PathPlayer analysis. You can enable the feature by checking the box if you think there are features like this on your disc.
__________________________________________________
TIP: 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.
