MPAA Ruins Own Films As Anti-Piracy Measure

WCityMike writes "Steve Kraus, a Chicago film projectionist, noted in this week's Movie Answer Man column that movie studios are quite purposefully putting 'large reddish brown spots that flash in the middle of the picture, usually placed in a light area' in order to ruin computer-compressed pirated copies of films. Among recent films that feature these spots are 'Ali,' 'Behind Enemy Lines,' '28 Days Later,' 'Freddy vs. Jason' and 'Underworld.' (I guess they had to destroy the movies in order to save them ... )"

Didn't see it

[ajs]

I've seen a couple of these films, and I did not see this. I'm wondering if it's just a single frame (BTW that makes it illegal in the US) or if it's only in certain theaters....

Re:bleh

[b0bby]

It's reel changes, not scene changes.

Thank Jebus, I am not crazy

[IronChef]

I SAW the dots in Underworld. They drove me NUTS. I thought it was some kind of problem with the film copy or... I dunno what.

I did not see this on 28 Days Later. Maybe I just missed it, or maybe it was only in the re-release with the new ending.

They are doing this on PURPOSE? Madness. Will these be on DVDs too?

Re:Why not pink or blue spots?

[gpinzone]

I have the Simpsons Season One on DVD and it most certainly does NOT look good. They compressed the hell out of it just to save pressing a couple more DVDs and do it properly.

Messed up compression? Not really.

[dbavirt]

The article does not say the blotches are used to screw up compression to ruin the film for pirates, as the slashdot summary suggests. Rather, it is just 20-year old "cap code" technology enlarged to be more easily visible in high-compressed pirated copies.

Cap code was "designed to uniquely mark film prints so that pirated copies could be traced to the source." Originially the dots were small enough that compression obscured them out of usability.

I've seen some pirated movies, and in my opinion, a few splotches on a few frames isn't going to screw them up a whole lot. They already tend to look and sound bad.

Re:Didn't see it

[the_2nd_coming]

he is refering to the law that says Movie studios and theaters cannot flash an add in teh middle of the movie at 15 FPS. this was attempted back in theday as a subconsiouse way to advertise to people and get them to buy products.....I don't think the law covers watermarking, but the way Congress makes laws now adays, I would not be suprised if the law was just vuege enought to allow some more Judicial tyrany to enter into society.

Um, these were always there

[lkaos]

I remember an art teacher explaining to us way back in the day what these brown spots were for.

Apparently, they're signals to the projectionist that it's time to change the reel soon. They're definitely are in old movies (especially in long old movies).

Sometimes you see VHS's with the spots still in them. I must admit I haven't RTFA but I do believe there's a good chance someone's just over reacting.

Re:The real solution

[GoRK]

I can see macrovision a little bit -- enough that the pulsating brightness bugs me -- even on my new (within the last 3 years) tv. Turning it off on the DVD player noticably improves picture quality. I had to use a macrovision remover unit to even hook a DVD player up to my girlfriend's TV as it's totally unwatchable (by everyone - not just me) without one. Neither of us even HAVE a vcr. Is your point bogus or am I just a freak?

Image of Dots

[Inda]

http://www.vcdquality.com/image.php?id=18919 [vcdquality.com]

Re:Neo Ranga...

[Microlith]

Well reading your later post, you obviously have no intention of paying for it so you can't bitch.

Your statement about them being converted from low quality analog sources is wrong. The show was made in the late 90s, and ADV used a digital source.

I've not heard any complaints about the video. If there were such bad sources, I would have heard much bitching already. On the site in my sig, they bitch if there's pixelation in a few frames of the video. If quality were as bad as you're claiming, then there would have been hell raised.

Re:Didn't see it

[[e-mail]]

No such law exists.

See http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp [snopes.com] for more.

No, you haven't RTFA.

[Jammer@CMH]

They're not talking about "Cigarette Burns" before reel changes, but unique marking codes indended to allow one to deduce which theatre allowed a given MPEG or DIVX to be made.

Re:Neo Ranga...

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are on crack I'm afraid I have to say.

Neoranga is sourced from digital component as is witnessed by the total lack of typical analog artifacts like cross-coloration and dot-crawl.

What's a more likely source of the problem is that the Xpeg (mpeg1, 2, 4, divx and all the variants) lossy compression algorithms have issues with reds, and in particular dark areas. When you use a codec with a low bit rate in addition you're not exactly helping.

In this case I think it's better to blame the animators for their color usage rather than any kind of mastering.

Here's a screenshot

[Cyclone66]

Ok there's not much usefull info in this thread so I'll try to add some :) Exhibit A: screenshot with dots [vcdquality.com]
You can see the big T shape in the upper middle part of the image.
Exhibit B: ...ok that's my only exhibit. Enjoy!

Re:Um, these were always there

[whoever57]

I remember an art teacher explaining to us way back in the day what these brown spots were for. Apparently, they're signals to the projectionist that it's time to change the reel soon.

Umm, well very rarely are they brown spots. Some 25 years ago, I ran a 35MM projector, showing 4 features per week at a university to several hundred viewers.

Very, very, rarely, did the prints have brown dots towards the end of the reel. Mostly, there were white dots where I, or another projectionist, had scratched the emulsion off the print.

The first set of dots was to indicate that the other projector should be started up (it takes time for the projector to come up to the correct speed) and the second set was the changover signal.

A reel lasted about 20 minutes, so the average film was 5-6 reels.

Burst Cutting Area

[yerricde]

DVDs that you buy in the stores are pressed (instead of burned), so by definition they all end up having the same image.

It's possible for stamped DVDs to include up to 188 bytes of individual data in the Burst Cutting Area [dvdburning.biz]. To get an idea of what BCA markings look like, turn over a GameCube disc and look for a fine 1.2mm wide "barcode" that overlaps the inner edge of the data area. Though DVD Video does not use the BCA, the forthcoming DVD HD Video specification may require decoders to read decryption key and serial number information from the BCA and add watermarks to the decoded picture.

Thank you, Slashdot!

[lone_marauder]

I feel much better now that I know I'm not crazy. I totally saw this in Underworld every time a large portion of the screen featured a solid light color, even though my wife insisted I was hallucinating. It looked like a pattern of six dots, two rows of three dots, flashing on the screen. Drove me up the frickin wall.

Re:Um, these were always there

[dotwaffle]

That's not brown dots, that's black ovals, normally in the top right, at a certain frequency to signal to the projectionist. You still get them...

Re:Okay, so now they know. Now what?

[Gaijin42]

Actually, the article said this was for identification, not screwing up compression.

They said they are using bigger dots, because they want them to still be visible AFTER compression. If they used the normal small dots, they might be washed out by the compression, and then unusable.

Well, probably they want both, but the article didn't mention anything about screwing up the compression ratio.

Re:The real solution

[Satan Dumpling]

Dvdidle can do that - clear the macrovision off your computer video output. And there exists a patch for ATI All In Wonder to allow it to record input with macrovision. Try some searches...

Re:Okay, so now they know. Now what?

[unclebrady]

Sorry, but its just for identification purposes, but even if it was to ruin compression, this is why DivX, XviD, any compressor program usually has a manual setting for the minimum number of frames between I-Frames. When I was *backing up* all my dvds, I think the default is something like 10 frames, up it to 24 so at most you get an I-frame/sec. Its not gonna increase the size that much, since its variable bit rate, think of it this way, a movie with an INSANE amount of action (LOTS of I-frames) still looks good on a 2 cd DivX rip.

In underworld

[SolemnDragon]

you're looking for a spot that appears for about 2-5 seconds. It's big; keep an eye on the left-hand side of the screen, and it's not going to be bright red, rather a reddish brown colour, ovalish in shape with a distinct edge. It appears and disappears in much the same way- and frequency- that the reel change markers do. You'll see it most distinctly when it appears against a concrete wall in the upper left while Celine is in the right-hand side of the screen. I wish i'd taken closer note of what scenes it appears in, but i was distracted by seeing it at all. I thought that it was maybe damage to the reels, as sometimes happens. But i distinctly remember it because i couldn't see any reason for it being there, and reel damage would have been intermittent (flashing) if it were local to a spot on the reel (like a pinprick through layers) or continuous top-to-ottom, like a scratch...

Maybe it says something about the movie, if i was paying that much attention to a random flaw on the screen...

Re:brown spots?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few picky notes. A Fourier series is a way to approximate a signal using an infinite sum of sinusoids. From this comes the Fourier transform, which allows a transformation of time domain functions into a frequency domain.

In the digital world, the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is a way to transform a set of samples in the time domain into a set of samples in the frequency domain. It has a fast algorithm (called the FFT) that does this very quickly. It can be applied columnwise and rowwise to an image to yield the 2D-FFT.

The FFT maps real data into complex data. For this reason, compression algorithms use the DCT (discrete cosine transform) instead, which maps real valued data into real valued data. It retains all the good properties of the FFT.

These transforms transform time domain data into frequency domain data. What we find when this is done to an image is that there is a lot of low frequency information, and only a little high frequency information. You could, for example, ignore all high frequency information and only store the low valued information, although the compression algorithms used today far surpass this simple method.

Here are some direct film examples

[maskeeper]

For thos who would suggest these are the reel markers or other such nonsense, here are several scans directly from FILM PRINTS of this phenomenon.

http://www.film-tech.com/ubbpics/ubb3141a.jpg
h ttp://www.film-tech.com/ubbpics/ubb3141b.jpg
http ://www.film-tech.com/ubbpics/ubb3141c.jpg
http:// www.film-tech.com/ubbpics/ubb3141d.jpg
http://www .film-tech.com/ubbpics/ubb3141e.jpg
http://www.fi lm-tech.com/ubbpics/ubb3141f.jpg

Projectionsit forums have been a buzz about this new version of the Caps Code for months-- and it is recommended if you see these dots, complain to a manager and request that they return the film to their distributor to show that we will not tolerate destruction of the films to prevent piracy.

Demand your money back, or passes- get the theater owners grumbling about this and it will end.

Re:Why do ugly watermarking?

[fireteller2]

The largest pirate film market in the world is in South East Asia. It is easy to find all the latest film in release at small mobile vendors. These burnt DVD's and Video CDs are usually from DV or Hi-8 source most often taped from the projection boot (for clean sound).

Although it is hard to believe that anyone would want to watch such a low quality product. It has clearly established itself in those cultures. I'm sure the studio sees this a being shut out of that market, even though there is high demand for their product.

So I am not suppressed at all that they would crate a system that is obvious enough to be seen in such a low quality reproduction, cheep enough to be implemented on ~2,000 prints (at least one reel), and simple enough to be unique for every print. I'm not sure there are other techniques that can accomplish this.

As far as I've seen these versions of a film are not in high demand on the blacknet, obviously because these are people with a higher standards for entertainment. Far more common are rips of academy screeners or regular DVDs.

What I object to is that they don't try to use this as a deterrent with labels on advertising (i.e. "This film protected by...") , because they know most people would object to it. What money they gain in Asia they will loose from the far more demanding (I pray) U.S. market.