Amazon Unbox (video on demand) – Removing DRM and burning to a DVD (for back up purposes)
by Lonnie on Feb.05, 2009, under The Dark Side
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided for educational purposes ONLY, I do not condone actually following these steps for illegal purposes.. by continuing on to read the article you agree to play nice and obey the copyright laws in your country.
Oh and keep in mind, Amazon and TMPEnc are the property of their respective owner, I am in no way affliated with those companies or names..
Loading ...With that said… continue on! (at your own risk) .. ( BELOW THE ADVERTISEMENT IS THE READMORE LINK )
Why would you want to do this? well primarily for backup purpsoses .. Say you download a movie from Amazon and Amazon goes out of business due to our tragic economic situation, or your computer crashes and you can’t afford to buy internet to re-download the movie due to the economic situation.. yadda yadda, you should be entitled to a hard copy back up of your purchase.. Some might also use this to download the much cheaper rental version of the movie from Amazon and then burn it to a DVD to own and watch whenever we want to, while this should work … it’s morally wrong, so of course you wouldn’t do such a thing!
So what do you need?
Update: I was told that the link in #1 below contains a virus, but I’ve not been able to confirm that. I attempted to verify and did not detect a virus myself, I can say it’s something many use, and continue to use on a daily basis.
- Windows Media Player 10, last time I did my homework, WMP 11 does not work. If you installed WMP11 – need help? browse this link and then come back.
- You will need a copy of FairUse4WM, which you can also find by clicking the link I gave you, need it again? ok here it is .. come on back when you’re done.
- You will need a video conversion software, I personally prefer TMPEnc Authoring Works 4, acquire it how ever you wish .. that’s what this guide uses.
So now you should have Media Player 10 installed, and a copy of FairUse4WM .. if your downgrade instructions told you to delete your DRM folders then you no longer have authorization to your movies that you currently have! it’s not really an issue, launch amazon unbox and doublt click on the video .. it will tell you that it’s obtaining the license, you may get a message saying try back later… ignore it, just click on all your movies and proceed… once you’ve done that your keys will be restored.
Now you launch FairUse4WM and browse to your movies folder, select one and proceed through the steps … remember where you save out the un-protected file.
You can test your movie by playing it with something like VLC media player .. if it works, you successfully stripped the DRM from the movie and can move on to the process of backing up to DVD.
- Launch TMPEnc and click on “Start a New Project”
- Select “From a file”
- Browse to your DRM free movie and open it
- Click “Do not create now” – If you do create a clip, you will risk audi sync issues that are a pain to correct
- The clip settings window will come up, just click “OK” at the bottom
- On the left of the screen you will see “Track 1″ and below that a “Settings” button .. click it
- You can rename your track to the name of the movie.
- Click the audio tab
- For “Encoder mode”, select “Re-encode as below if necessary”
- Leave audio stream to Dolby Digital, if it isn’t in Dolby Digital, change it so that it is and click OK
- Choose “Menu” from the top and select No Menu, or if you want, create one .. but menu designing is out of the scope of this guide.
- Once you have your menu figured out, go to the Simulation menu and play it, wait till you can see some talking going on so you can make sure your audio is in sync.. if you did everything I said, it should be! Don’t use the fast forward options to skip ahead, just be patient.
- Select the “Output” menu option and change your target size, if you’re using a standard DVD set it to 4.7 GB
- Check the box to have it write to the media disc after completion
- Click “Writer Settings” and make sure you’ve chosen the right drive and that a blank DVD is in there..
- Click “Start Output” … and wait for about an hour or so, depending on the speed of your system ..
Once you’ve done it once or twice it’ll seem like cake … back up your media and store it in a safe place, don’t share it will your pals or anything else illegal like burning rentals for the purpose of keeping it.
Happy viewing!
March 16th, 2009 on 7:02 pm
nice! [IMG]http://rich-niche.info/cookie/img/smilies/happy.gif[/IMG]
March 26th, 2009 on 9:16 am
Thank you, thank you, for sharing this educational info. I am a college professor and I like to show videos in my class from time to time. One of them I had previously recorded it from a program I watched on TV, but the disk was damaged and no longer played. So I purchased the program from the only place that has it available (Amazon) but to my dismay I found that it would only play through the computer and I could not burn it for a regular DVD player. Some of our older classrooms are not fully computer-friendly yet and whatever you show has to be on a DVD disk or a VHS tape….otherwise it is a circus to arrange for a tech cart and a laptop setup to show anything else.
Hypothetically (because I would never actually do such a thing, of course) let’s say I followed these instructions to burn my purchased program to a disk for educational use…and let’s also say hypothetically that I found that the process worked flawlessly. Hypothetically, I would be very grateful to you for helping me do it.
March 26th, 2009 on 9:26 am
Angela,
Thanks for the comments, I’m glad that if you hypothetically were to follow my directions and it hypothetically worked, you’d be hypothetically grateful for the help! .. I can say that if you were hypothetically grateful, I’d be hypothetically happy to have been of assistance :)
Hypothetically yours,
Lonnie
March 30th, 2009 on 10:57 pm
I find it amusing that the music and movie industries (and the sellers who keep them in business) make it difficult for you to use the products (DRM’d movies and music) once you’ve purchased them. Yet, hypothetically, if you were to acquire the same titles illegally and at the same quality, you, hypothetically, don’t even have to pay from them AND I think you, hypothetically, have the ability to burn them and play them anywhere.
I think a way to cut down on the unlawful downloading would be make legal downloading a bit more user friendly; in theory of course. There’s a lot of red tape that could be easily avoided if you were to go to the dark side.
August 24th, 2009 on 4:27 pm
These are the best instructions I have ever seen for the removal of a DRM, as well as the only ones that worked. I purchased files myself (from a company that shall remain nameless) and was very disappointed to find that I then did not have the ability to make a backup of my own purchased files, or even watch them on my Ipod Touch. Thanks to you, I do, now have that ability and am enjoying them.
DRM is fine, in principle, but I agree that it severely hampers the ability of legitimate usage of files that you yourself purchase and buy, and encourages people to use illegal means instead.
August 24th, 2009 on 7:17 pm
Thanks for the info, but for some reason it’s not working with me. When I try to play the videos in unbox I get error 0×8007007E and even re-installing unbox I still can’t watch my bought-and-paid-for shows. Any ideas?
October 31st, 2009 on 9:36 am
Thank you. Hypothetically, I found one of the most important films of my childhood, which hypothetically never went to DVD but went straight to unbox. And in this hypothetical situation, I was overjoyed to find it and dismayed because I couldn’t burn it or have a saved copy that I could be sure to have with me after the VHS (that I also own, yes I’ve hypothetically purchased this twice) eventually dies and I get new computers, etc.
In that case, your tutorial would have been most helpful and had me doing a little happy dance around my apartment.
Hypothetically.
October 31st, 2009 on 10:39 am
I hypothetically giggled like a kid when I read your comment Lauren! lol thanks for the remark, and glad it was “educational” .. hypothetically speaking
December 15th, 2009 on 4:50 am
Lonnie, it turns out that the first link on undrm you have on yr. post has a virus. It was a huge headache getting rid of it :(
December 18th, 2009 on 1:32 pm
Thanks for letting me know, it must be a new development because it was clean when I put the article together. I’ll make note on my entry.
December 21st, 2009 on 2:11 pm
Everything was working fine a few months ago. Hadn’t done anything with it for awhile and when I ran the FairUse, it asked for the license keys and found them, but then it said that it appears I do not have the license for the file that I was trying to convert. Any suggestions?
December 21st, 2009 on 2:38 pm
And I forgot to mention… when I click on my videos in amazon unbox – it says I must upgrade to WMP11 to view :(
June 7th, 2010 on 8:57 am
Yes, you can’t play your amazon unbox video unless you have WMP11 installed. FairUse4WM doesn’t work if you have WMP11 installed. You need to have the DRM licence for FairUse4WM to work. You can’t get the licence until you have played the video……………….