The Cardinal Sin

[getifa]

Ok, I'm new to all this - so please forgive me. I have had a shocker, so bear with me - the long story made short...

I'm from Australia, was living in UK, bought NW-E003F (its grand), ripped all my cd's in UK via SonicStage CP 4.0 (all's working well so far), went travelling for six months, droped in home (AU) breifly, ripped all my cd's in Australia via mates PC and Windows Media Player 9 and burnt to data cd's as .wms's (this is where I stop re-searching and terribly wrong - I think), am now living in Ireland, have my laptop back with SonicStage, have a wad of .wma files, have migrated the license and they play on both MWP 10 and SS as .wma files - but they won't / can't be converted or transfered to my walkman.

After hunting around for a few days now - I see that this was an issue for people years ago before everyone worked it out and I'm still laggin miles behind. And from what I can gather - its too bad soo sad, wait till get back to oz and re-ripp with SS?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

[ceres]

Ok, I'm new to all this - so please forgive me. I have had a shocker, so bear with me - the long story made short...

I'm from Australia, was living in UK, bought NW-E003F (its grand), ripped all my cd's in UK via SonicStage CP 4.0 (all's working well so far), went travelling for six months, droped in home (AU) breifly, ripped all my cd's in Australia via mates PC and Windows Media Player 9 and burnt to data cd's as .wms's (this is where I stop re-searching and terribly wrong - I think), am now living in Ireland, have my laptop back with SonicStage, have a wad of .wma files, have migrated the license and they play on both MWP 10 and SS as .wma files - but they won't / can't be converted or transfered to my walkman.

After hunting around for a few days now - I see that this was an issue for people years ago before everyone worked it out and I'm still laggin miles behind. And from what I can gather - its too bad soo sad, wait till get back to oz and re-ripp with SS?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

...migrated the license. I think that´s where your problem is. Your walkman offers native wma support. Did you add copy protection in wmp while initially ripping the cds?

[getifa]

...migrated the license. I think that´s where your problem is. Your walkman offers native wma support. Did you add copy protection in wmp while initially ripping the cds?

sadly - yes.

[ceres]

sadly - yes.

i´m not sure what setting the copy protection flag in wmp actually does. but from what i have gathered not much as you are playing back files on your laptop that were ripped on a machine in australia. so it may be a sonic stage problem. try ml_sony and see whether your wma songs appear in your player´s library.

http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2293

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Well, it's not a flag that Windows Media uses to define DRM-protected vs non-protected.

DRM protection of content is implemented in WMA/WMV/ASF by encrypting the content during file creation.

So to all intents and purposes, you need the license or some way of recreating the key to the encryption to be able to do bugger all with the encrypted/protected files.

Also, converters and players need to be built to handle encrypted/protected media to be able to play em back or convert the files if they are protected.

That's why many cheap and non-compliant decks cannot handle DRM protected files, because they aint programmed (in the handling/decode side) to deal with the encryption. Likewise, that's why a lot of audio playback software cannot handle DRM protected content, because they dont know how to handle the encryption.

And hence why each time the DRM method is altered substantially, usually substantially rather than a minor change, the non-destructive DRM workarounds need to be modded and/or rebuilt if DRM methods change.

Anyway, that's the short outline of how DRM works in WM formats... and other formats too (i suspect that something along the same lines is the case with ATRAC and OpenMagicGate - but i aint swearing to say i know for sure re Sony formats).

So in essence..

You pretty much can't to bugger all with copy protected WM format files, without having the license there and available so that the software which (assuming it supports DRM) can interact with it according to license.

If it can't, the file is considered unusable/corrupt/....... (fill in appropriate term, since not all WM format utils report the right version of the case).

So assuming you cannot use the files due to licenses gone AWOL (that's why you have a license backup facility... to allow you to backup licenses so you can transport files and licenses between machines... within the migration scope the licenses allow for), then it's pretty much end game, give up and obtain the content another way from another source.

Funnily enough, ATRAC users who inadvertently applied copy protection to their content and migrated files without migrating licenses (can't recall how it's done in OpenMG and SonicStage software) face the same prob.

The reasons why it's end game, really, for DRM protected files and no licenses available, is :-

1. Without the license associated to the file, the player/converter etc wont do anything with it... til it gets the right credentials/authoristation from the migrated or present license.

2. If you cannot get the file to demux/decode, which requires that it can be decrypted and decoded, then it's pretty much end game as far as even trying to transcode it via 'analog loop' or API methods goes too.

3. Likewise, no chance of playing it back via the soundcard output and recording via a real analog loop to recreate the content.

All the methods out there that work, 'analog loop' or non-destructive DRM removal based methods, all require that you have the license for the content so the player/converter/decrypting util can authentically decode/decrypt the content.

End game, sadly.

I highly doubt the original (otherwise useless now) DRM hack that worked with windows media 7/8 encodings that were DRM protected (and the DRM now aint the same hence why the old hacks dont work) will help here if you could locate it. As again, it would require a license being current to the content as i recall.

Definately end game.

Your only real option, to get past the non-usable DRM barrier, assuming it is due to DRM not something else entirely, is to resource the content from alternative sources.

I learnt the hard way, many many moons ago... back when WMA and DRMed WMA was still a new thing

'Tom Kat'