Disc Identification/Serialization Data

Anatomy of a PS4 Game Disc

The Identification & Serialisation Data from a PlayStation 4 Game Title contains several Information, which you can find not only on any Game Disc pressed for the PlayStation 4, but also similar for any PlayStation 3 and/or any other Console-based Game Disc, and other Media pressed on CD, DVD and Blu-ray.

Productcode

CD showing IFPI-Codes in detail - there is no BCA visible

Blu-Ray Disc PS3 GAME IFPI- Mastering SID Code single-layer

Blu-Ray Disc PS3 GAME IFPI- Mastering SID Codes dual-layers

Blu-Ray Disc PS4 GAME IFPI- Mastering SID Code single-layer with IFPI logo

DVD showing CBA in detail - on the inner ring is the IFPI

Wii Disk showing CBA in detail - on the inner ring is the IFPI

Wii Super Mario Galaxy PAL - showing IFPI - BCA & Angular Marks

Wii Super Mario Galaxy PAL - BCA cropped

BCA from a single-layer PS4 Game Disc together with the PIC Zone which contains several barcodes & other serial numbers

A sketch about the Angular Marks on a optical disc

Screenshot while reading a pressed Blu-ray Movie with Angular Marks

Main article: Productcode

Layout

unique ASCII of length 9 to identify, used for PS1/PSX, PS2/PStwo, PS3, PSP, PSP2/Vita.

format: XXXXYYYYY (lettercode for XXXX / numbers for YYYYY)

Source Identification Code

The Source Identification Code (SID-Code) can be found on almost all pressed optical discs worldwide since 1994, originally planned as a piracy safeguard, but it's also used for acceptance sampling. It contains two codes, a Mould Code and a Mastering Code. Each code consists the digits "IFPI" (named by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) followed by a four or (less often) five digit code. These two codes are located in the inner ring from any optical disc (outside the data section) and can be used to trace the location from a manufacturing or mastering plant, where the disc got pressed.

Mastering Plant SID-Codes

Note: There were no distinctions between a single-layer and a dual-layer Game Disc pressed both on DVD and BD.

Region	Disc Type	Platform	SID-Mould Code	Inner Ring Side	SID-Mastering Code(s)	Inner Ring Side	Mastering Plant	Country	Facility	Remark
Japan	CD	PSX	IFPI 45**	Bottom	IFPI L272 IFPI L274 IFPI L275 IFPI L276	on Top	Sony DADC Japan Inc.	Japan	Shizuoka - Haibara District, Shizuoka Prefecture	^[1]
Japan	CD	PS2	IFPI 45**	?	IFPI L274 IFPI L275	?	Sony DADC Japan Inc.	Japan	Shizuoka - Haibara District, Shizuoka Prefecture
Japan	DVD	PS2	IFPI 45**	?	IFPI L271 IFPI L272 IFPI L275	?	Sony DADC Japan Inc.	Japan	Shizuoka - Haibara District, Shizuoka Prefecture
Japan	BD	PS3	IFPI 45**	on Top	IFPI L280	Bottom	Sony DADC Japan Inc.	Japan	Shizuoka - Haibara District, Shizuoka Prefecture
Japan	BD	PS4	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
North America	CD	PSX	IFPI 50 IFPI 51 IFPI 72**	Bottom	IFPI L330 IFPI L336 IFPI L424	on Top	Sony DADC US Inc.	United States	IFPI 50 = Pitman, New Jersey IFPI 51 = Terre Haute, Indiana IFPI 72** = ?	^[2]
North America	CD	PS2	IFPI 50**	?	IFPI L327 IFPI L330	?	Sony DADC US Inc.	United States	Pitman, New Jersey
North America	DVD	PS2	IFPI QW**	?	IFPI L327 IFPI L330 IFPI L331 IFPI L332	?	Sony DADC US Inc.	United States	Terre Haute, Indiana
North America	BD	PS3	IFPI QW**	on Top	IFPI L321 IFPI L322 IFPI L323 IFPI L324 IFPI L325	Bottom	Sony DADC US Inc.	United States	Terre Haute, Indiana
North America	BD	PS4	?	?	IFPI L325	Bottom	Sony DADC US Inc.	United States	Terre Haute, Indiana	^[3]
Europe	CD	PSX	IFPI 94**	Bottom	IFPI L553 IFPI L555	on Top	Sony DADC Austria AG	Austria	Anif, near Salzburg	^[4]
Europe	CD	PS2	IFPI 94**	?	IFPI L558	?	Sony DADC Austria AG	Austria	Anif, near Salzburg
Europe	DVD	PS2	IFPI 94**	Bottom	IFPI L556 IFPI L557 IFPI L558	Bottom	Sony DADC Austria AG	Austria	Anif, near Salzburg
Europe	BD	PS3	IFPI 94**	on Top	IFPI LY23 IFPI LY24 IFPI LY25 IFPI LY26 IFPI LY27	Bottom	?	?	?
Europe	BD	PS4	IFPI 94**	on Top	IFPI LY25 IFPI LY26	Bottom	?	?	?	^[5]

Burst Cutting Area

The (Narrow) Burst Cutting Area ((N)BCA) can be used for adding further Information such as serial numbers or any other Information about the manufacturing process etc. The BCA-Code is written using a Nd:YAG laser and can be also used as a security measure to avoid illegal copies from a original pressed disc (as used on Game Discs both for the Nintendo GameCube & the Nintendo Wii). Therefore it's impossible to reproduce/copy the BCA with a standard optical disc drive running on a PC/Laptop.

Location: inner ring, inside data section
Radius: 1.2 mm (zone between 22.3 ±0.4 mm to 23.5 mm ±0.5 mm (single-layer), 21.0 ±0.4 mm to 22.2 mm ±0.5 mm (dual-layer))
Data size: 12 bytes (minimum) to 188 bytes (maximum) (in steps of 16 bytes)

Sometimes blank recordable & rewritable discs (such as DVD-R/RW/RAM) also contains a BCA-Code, while Information about the CPRM and other DRM-policies were stored.

A Pre-recorded Media Serial Number (PMSN), located inside the BCA, can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc (but extremely unlikely on PS3/PS4 Game Discs because this is a part from the AACS copy protection).

PIC Zone

This (pre-recorded) PIC Zone, which is included within the BCA (Data size: 0x73 bytes), contains general Information about the disc that includes, but is not restricted to:

Physical media class and version,
Physical address of the start of the Data Zone
Physical address of the start of the outer Zone (if this is a single-layer media, this is the lead-out)
Number of layers
Recording Density
Write power Information

Angular Marks

Angular Marks are also a security measure to avoid piracy. It makes the difference that these Marks were located in the data area of a disc (outside the BCA). It works similar to the old Bad Sector copy protection, were the CD-ROM got pressed with zero-filled Physical Sector Numbers, which were unreadable for very old outdated optical disc drives without a RAW-writing function. Instead, the sectors are readable (error correction will fix the angular marks), but a special feature of the DVD controller allows recovering the bit-exact position and size of the laser mark. The result is then stored signed in the BCA, so that the reader can validate it. Since the laser marks are written after producing the discs, the marks cannot be as accurately as required to pass a given BCA. This method is used on the Nintendo Gamecube, for example. This can be circumvented by placing strings of zeros in the actual bitstream, which - to the reader - look identical to an angular laser mark.

It is known^[6] that Sony (Pictures Home Entertainment) use these Marks for their retail Blu-ray Movies to avoid illegal copies (which is easy to bypass), but there are no Information about the applicability on PS3/PS4 Game Discs pressed on BD-ROM.

ROM Mark

Notes

It is unknown if any PS3/PS4 Game Discs contains a ROM Mark because these Marks were only in use when there were several Mastering plants who got the order to press identical DVD's and/or Blu-ray's (for example when one plant in Portugal and another one in Finland got the orders to press the same Blu-ray Movie with identical Languages and Subtitles for releasing in several European markets. Therefore it works like a copy protection between all Mastering plants and those are able to verify if there were other (unlicensed) Mastering plants who reproduces a DVD and/or Blu-ray without permission (like on Third World markets with illegal copies in China, for example). But it seems that there is only one Mastering plant for each Region who owns the License to press PS4 Game Discs. As like, it would be redundant that PS4 Game Discs contains a ROM Mark.

The ROM Mark contains the Volume ID required to decrypt content encrypted using AACS.

So the ROM Mark can be also used as a security measure against piracy, which works together with AACS and already in use with several pressed Blu-ray movies. Of course it would be possible that the ROM Mark communicates with any other file(s) on a PS3/PS4 Game Disc, but with which one (EBOOT.BIN/INSTALL.PKG)? Therefore the following can be thought of as a general Information.

Information

ROM Mark or BD-ROM Mark is a serialization technology designed to make it more difficult for replication plants to do unlogged over-runs (being sold out the back door, without the copyright holder's knowledge) on a pressing.

Only licensed BD-ROM manufacturers have access to the equipment that can make these unique ROM Marks (physical-layer to store key cryptographic secrets).

Although every machine used to laser-cut a master disc is theoretically the same, the motor that spins the blank disc and moves the laser along a spiral track varies slightly in speed and precision. So if a digital marker is put in the middle of a recording, its physical position on the master disc - and every disc then pressed - will be a unique fingerprint of the cutting machine.

Location: ?
Length: ?
Sample: ?

Patents and references

Trivia

If you got horny about those pictures of the bottom side from a PS4 Game Disc:

CUSA-00002 (Killzone: Shadow Fall): JPG @ 4843x4915px - TIF @ 11758x11933px
CUSA-00128 (FIFA 14):: JPG @ 3686x3633px - TIF @ 12166x11990px

References

↑ Mastering Code is mirrored (probably printed from the bottom side as usual but the bottom from a PlayStation Disc is entire blackened). Also only those Game Discs with a silver-printed surface contains a visible Mastering Code (mostly PlayStation the Best and a few Standard Games) because the area from the Mastering Code is covert with the Disc Cover from the actual Game itself.
↑ Mastering Code is mirrored (probably printed from the bottom side as usual but the bottom from a PlayStation Disc is entire blackened). Also only those Game Discs with a silver-printed surface contains a visible Mastering Code (mostly Greatest Hits and a few Standard Games) because the area from the Mastering Code is covert with the Disc Cover from the actual Game itself.
↑ see http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5543/9vvd.jpg - Picture about the bottom inner ring from a North American PS4 single-layer Game Disc.
↑ Mastering Code is mirrored (probably printed from the bottom side as usual but the bottom from a PlayStation Disc is entire blackened). Also only those Game Discs with a silver-printed surface contains a visible Mastering Code (mostly Platinum and a few Standard Games) because the area from the Mastering Code is covert with the Disc Cover from the actual Game itself.
↑ see http://salzburg.orf.at/news/stories/2616253/ - Report about the Mastering plant from Sony DADC in Thalgau, Austria (in German Language).
↑ see http://psdevwiki.com/ps3/ - AACS specifications and BD patents

Generic

References:

Postscribed ID
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/downloadablefile/bd-romwhitepaper20070308-15270.pdf (including page 40 - SID, page 41 - BCA, page 45 - PIC Zone)
AACS specifications
Patent 07278031 - Secure distribution of portable game software & a sketch from the given Patent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Founders
Thomson Patent: Optical disc with pre-recorded and recordable regions (a proposed alternative for CBA: disabled at factory, enabled at a point of sale)
SCEI Patent: A game playing system includes a use permission tag: a patent that could effectively prevent the use of second-hand game (e.g.: using NFC)

[1] Mastering Code is mirrored (probably printed from the bottom side as usual but the bottom from a PlayStation Disc is entire blackened). Also only those Game Discs with a silver-printed surface contains a visible Mastering Code (mostly PlayStation the Best and a few Standard Games) because the area from the Mastering Code is covert with the Disc Cover from the actual Game itself.

[2] Mastering Code is mirrored (probably printed from the bottom side as usual but the bottom from a PlayStation Disc is entire blackened). Also only those Game Discs with a silver-printed surface contains a visible Mastering Code (mostly Greatest Hits and a few Standard Games) because the area from the Mastering Code is covert with the Disc Cover from the actual Game itself.

[3] see http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5543/9vvd.jpg - Picture about the bottom inner ring from a North American PS4 single-layer Game Disc.

[4] Mastering Code is mirrored (probably printed from the bottom side as usual but the bottom from a PlayStation Disc is entire blackened). Also only those Game Discs with a silver-printed surface contains a visible Mastering Code (mostly Platinum and a few Standard Games) because the area from the Mastering Code is covert with the Disc Cover from the actual Game itself.

[5] see http://salzburg.orf.at/news/stories/2616253/ - Report about the Mastering plant from Sony DADC in Thalgau, Austria (in German Language).

[6] see http://psdevwiki.com/ps3/ - AACS specifications and BD patents

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Disc Identification/Serialization Data

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