Prince of Darkness ---> weird hidden video?
 

Hey, I'm curious if anyone has heard about this weird hidden video on the Prince of Darkness DVD (the universal one). There's a track of strange black and white footage (without audio) that appears to be some sort of musical set in the 1940s. In order to access it, you have to be watching the DVD on your computer. The filename on the DVD is "VIDEO_TS.VOB" and is 578 megabytes. You have to download a VLC player to see it though. Does anyone have any idea what movie this is from, and what it is doing on the DVD?

It's a message from the future.

This is not a dream dream dream.

Was the footage creepy?

Or from the past:

"Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast, faster than you could believe. DON'T turn your back, DON'T look away, and DON'T BLINK. Good luck."

I am such a geek for recognizing that quote! :lol::lol::lol:

Others have also found this easter egg:

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forum...weirdness.html

Not sure if it's better documented elsewhere.

Same Here! Excellent cross reference!!!

:thumbsup: Nice!

A while back when I was planning to store all of my movies on a video server, I noticed that some of older Blue Underground discs had a hidden menu from another film - for example, one of discs had a menu from Blue Crush hidden somewhere.

Just bought this on DVD...might have to check it out.

There is a form of copy protection that uses a hidden piece of video that contains deliberate encoding errors to confuse ripping programs. I don't know if that's the case here, but it might be.

Don't have this disc, but most Universal discs I've checked on the computer have a 1-second clip from the Billy Elliott trailer, with the kid jumping in the air with a bunch of lights behind him (might actually be from that "Universal DVD" promo with movie clips they used to put at the beginning). It comes up under "Unreferenced Material", also on some Disney and Universal titles I've seen one frame of red flowers, one of the Electric Company discs even has an extra outtake that isn't shown in any of the regular DVD "Titles". An MGM title I checked had the main menu (just a still) for a different title hidden there too.

I thought the segments with the anti-ripping stuff were just black, but I could be wrong.

The Billy Elliot clip is known to be an instance of the Sony ARccOS copy protection program.

Hi, Fred.
Hi, Jack.

I once mentioned this quite sometime ago and thought this thread could lead to some type of answer.
The Criterion DVD "W.C.Fields: 6 Short Films" has all sorts of extraneous videos buried in the pressing. You have to try to play it in your computer or such and you'll note that it takes up a lot of space for such a small running time. I forget how I saw these things but eventually discovered a whole bunch of Hong Kong R-rated martial arts trailers and a long clip or entire movie about a female protagonist although I think it had no soundtrack.
My sense is that the plant that pressed this title slipped something into the second layer...but it's only a guess.

That's weird, since I've only seen it on Universal titles, and I thought they used Macrovision's RipGuard protection instead. Is Jamie Bell getting any royalties from his secret appearance? :)

Just checked it again (on King Kong, which Jamie Bell also appears in), it's labeled as "VTS 3" and starts with the Universal globe dissolving into him jumping in the air with bright lights filling the background. Can't figure out a way to capture a still from it.

Criterion also did that on their Insomnia DVD, which features a hidden soundless hour-long doc of the making of gay boxer movie Like It Is.

How is this effective, when it is a separate video? Couldn't they just copy everything but the troublesome clip?

"Billy Elliot" was distributed by Universal on home video in the U.S. I assume if they're going to use a clip for this copy protection scheme, they'd want to use one that they have the rights to. The older clip that the OP was asking about could be in the public domain, or just an old movie owned by the studio that released the DVD he's asking about. I really have no idea if this is the case. It's just one possible explanation for the mysterious footage.

As far as types of copy protection used, most DVDs employ more than one. And sometimes they use different protections on different discs.

I think that's pretty much how a lot of the ripping programs get around ARccOS.

Okay so I know it has been awhile but I just bought PoD the other day and want to try to rip this clip off the DVD, put it up on youtube and send it to universal with a little note saying "why is this on the dvd..." etc. Does anyone know how I could go about doing this? I have looked up some programs but none of them actually find the clip on the DVD and only show the trailer and universal intro.