Silencing movies to fight internet piracy
Paramount apparently decided that it would be a great idea to deter and track piracy by silencing random parts of the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This seems to be a sort of watermarking technique to be able to identify the cinema the copy of the movie was made.. if the guys who copy the movie are stupid enough to use the same sound source. This is another classic case where the industry is punishing their legit customers and not the ones who copy and download the media. It’s the same case with copy protections and DRM.
The only ones who have to cope with those things are the customers who purchase the products, never heard of any copy protections or DRM in movies, games or music that were available in P2P networks. The commenters at Boing-Boing write about 3-6 random sound drops for a few seconds. Now that would really make me angry and I would definitely ask for a refund on my way out. What’s their next ingenious move, blank out a few scenes ? The cinemas themselves do not seem to have a say in the matter. I would bet that the movie that is available on P2P networks does not have those sound gaps. Wanna bet?
Source: Ghacks.net
they’re idiots. they need to move with the times.
im guessing it wont really matter because the sounds drops can easily be fixed.
This is completely stupid…
I bet that theyre having a laugh about it…
If I went to the cinema and the sound wasnt perfect I would probably ask for my money back too!
I’ll believe it when I hear it.
lol thats the best idea ever
It amazes me that people still watch Cam or TS releases of a movie !
Sounds too stupid to b true… or is it?
I never noticed any sound drops when I went to see Indy - but we did have a severly mentally-handicapped girl screaming every 2 minutes instead. Perhaps she was a plant!
wtf man. why cant they just add a few different unique sounds like in the effects or something. or why not play a couple of high frequency tones that is just out of range of the human ear.
R5 or DVDRip FTW!!!
lol, well most cammers are relatively young so why not install this mosquito sound device http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7240653.stm
xD
ok with me ill just insert parts of the movie soundtrack in the missing parts lol.
It’s amazing how such a major movie distribution companies can say silly things like this one. What had they been drinking lately?!
They are desperate.
There is nothing to do with the piracy.
Even if there will be watermarks, the man who captured the movie, can blur it.
Actually if you just open the audio track in a music editing program you can see any significant dips in sound and can be fixed. That’s the way they’re going ot probably check them anyway, why not take a few minutes to maybe embed a message saying “Nice Try”
it would be nice if you would italic your own text so we can see what you added yourself.. This way we know what your opinion is and what the objective text says.
this is made all the more funnier by those trailers they run before films telling you how the picture and SOUND quality are so much better at the cinema than on a pirated copy lol
But yeah the sound is probably the main reason that attracts me to the cinema - nice loud, good quality surround and if the sound kept cutting out i’d definitely ask for a refund.
Can’t really see this being a problem. As mentioned above the volume can be fixed in Audacity or something or at worst groups would just have to splice in the missing audio from a different source.
I doubt that this would be true. I think it’s more likely mastering errors on the copies going out to the cinemas.
@ no. 9
Because sounds in digital format, unless truly lossless, tend to cut out the higher and lower end of the sound spectrum which the human ear doesn’t hear in order to save space. Also, immagine the pain if a high frequency sound were to be played in a cinema all way through a film, or even in random (painfull) bits!
Why don’t they at a random small dot at some frame(s). Visitors wouldn’t notice…
How about this for a crazy idea.
Have people hang around pubs waiting for the little-old-chinese-lady to come round and sell you a copy. Arrest her and threaten her and her familly with deportation unless she gives you next person above her. Keep doing that up the food chain until you get to Mr big……
PS and deport them anyway !
Instead of tinkering with the copies of films, maybe they should instead perfect the quality. I saw Indy 4 on its first showing and was deeply disappointed with the quality and sound of the film. Mind you the theater was equipped with all the latest thx gizmos and all but it seemed that for its first showing, this film had some scratches already and sound was not really jumping at you like most Spielberg movies normally would. I left the moviehouse saying I should have saved money and downloaded it instead,
sybull - you would get merked if you went anywhere near the top of the chain.
Some of these dvd dealers also shot crack!
Go ahead and silence them. There’s a lifetime of movies, music, porn, and games readily available without infringements or restrictions =)
wow guess i’ll be going to the movies less
Also they can shove the movie far deep in their @sses and then track down the smell..
Wow, making cinema more and more unattractive to potential goers is a clever move.
The real 3 step solution for a working system in the future:
1. Kill the dinosaur
2. Kill the dinosaur
3. Kill the dinosaur
They could still tell even if you filled in the gaps. If you lined up the two in an editor you could analyze the differences. Flip the polarity on one and mixdown and the sound should silent. If there is sound then somebody filled in the gap. Or just by looking at the waveform…
Not that it’s a thing to worry about, or that it will stop anything. But, to be clear…
So you just fill in the sound drops if you can pick them up with another part of the movie that makes it sound like it’s still good
And yeah it’s really annoying when the sound drops; I remember it being quite bothersome when I watched Rambo in theatres, and almost every dissolve change to another scene had both a sound drop AND extremely noticeable video lens change, like the color would switch to a sepia color.
And like I said in a post back around like October or something… My gf went to a film school and was told they’re gonna be digitally marking the audio in movies to trace it back to the source.
And I don’t think the news above is talking about the film reels; that couldn’t be traced back to a source, possibly to a film distribution company or a movie theatre, that’s about it… However I DO know they’re talking about dvdscreeners, because specific people are given those. They need to be signed out, and specific people get specific ones. I warned you long ago!
This is just a first, though, because true digital watermaking on the audio won’t be picked up at all by the regular ear, you need a program to decode part of it. This is a small stepping stone to that.
If I’m not mistaken, this is more punishing to the actual theater owner. The sound drops do not tell the studio “who” made the cam, it just allows them to find out which theater it was filmed in order to punish that theater for not taking measures against piracy. At my theater they have a guy with IR goggles come in every 30 minutes to check for cams… or random cloaked flashlight dude.
what an idiotic solution.
Is it problem to go to the 2 different cinemas and fill gaps from one to the another?…
if they really wanted to they could still tell. it would be a hassle though especially on the cams without line audio.
I heard about the technology that the theatre canvas is sprayed with special material that prohibits cameras from shooting (canvas appears as white rectangle on the video).
The same technique is used for car number plates - you shot the car with camera, no nubmer is visible.
all they have to do is drop the sound of one instrument in the background music or something, where it would be awfully hard for peeps to tell. im sure it wouldnt be complete silence. unless they are complete idiots.
Guards with IR-goggles searching for piraters… DAMN! Theater sounds really exciting all the sudden
I knew it! I first thought there was something wrong with my hearing when i missed the end of a sentence Indy spoke.
Good to know that it only was some stupid and useless pirate protection
hey i might have witnessed this on the indiana jones opening night it happened twice during the movie once during the action part of the cars going through the jungle i thought it might be the theaters fault. but here is the thing i went to see it twice right after the other and they had 2 screens that night. i was in a different theater and they sound loss came at the same points. i mean i dont know if they started this or if it was the theaters copy or something but it happened. my theater has had it share of pirates in the past. i watched them take a 17yr old girl out with a video camera. i couldnt believe it. LOL i also seen them take out a bunch of girls for taking pics with theyre cell phones during pirates dead man chest. What i also dont understand is we have came this far with technology and the theater projector screen quality is garbage. i dont know why they dont put a hd projector up in there. i mean come on we are paying 9 -10 dollars to see a MOVIE!
Bad move…only reason people are still going to the movies is because of the quality and experience. When you mess up the sound or something, that ruins the experience…If this really goes down, forget paying for movies.
I’ll stick to p2p/scene which offers better quality for free.
Who cares, I haven’t gone to the movies in years and I don’t plan on going anytime soon. Hopefully the paying customers will complain enough to the Cinema and ask for refunds that this practice will eventually end.
A friend told me the sound cut out twice during Iron Man too, once during an important plot point.
So much for the cinema being a better experience!
Not even logical, it would still be movie theater quality sound.
@29 lolz
Lol !! I loolledzed
But serious this is not a solution it’s just testing our creativity, because ofcourse then we’ll ”fill the gap” with or our own expertise synching, or with pieces from another source. All we gotta do is Kill the dinosaur!
I went to see indian jones movie at a cinema and I did not notice any loss of sound or anything weird like that. I guess my cinema was the lucky one. Plus, us pirates don’t just steal to steal, if it’s good, which it was, then I will pay, which I did. It’s as simple as that. Not only that, the ticket prices are going up and damn, my girlfriend was like you know it went up right, I was like whatttttttt! It’s already high up as it is already. But anyway, it was a good flick and I had no sound fluck ups. After I wanted to walk into another movie, but my girl was like nahhh, I’m tired, let’s go watch some movies at home. I was like humm ok, n back to our home cinema we came
I think that they might be thinking of doing this for the dvd screeners of movies that they release but a smarter way to combat dvd screeners being put on the net is to start watermarking the whole movie with the name of the person that they originally gave the screener to that way they could find who leaked it to the nbet but by the looks of it by the time they come up with that dvds, bluerays and such won’t be used anymore and there want be any point to watermark them
…so the new Indiana Jones film has been randomly silenced???
Jees,, i was gonna take my son to see that tomorrow; i thought it would make a nice change to watching all this downloaded stuff. I guess i wont bother now
I dunno,,,,, you intend “putting something back” into this multi billion pound/dollar industry and this is how they treat ya…lol
Or another alternative is to get the sound from 2 different cinema and do a differential analysis, and recover the missing sounds clips.
Did they bail on the whole ‘dots’ thing?
@46 I agree if the movie is good, your gonna go pay for it. I had to go to the cinemas for this one, Honestly I didnt notice any sound missing either, I go for the experience, now and day with what the tickets prices are going to be you mess up a little bit and its ruined specially with the true movie goers who go to get the perfect seat etc.. bunch of pissed off folks if you screw with film , lol..
#11: What if there are young people going to watch the movie? and theyre not camming? That means theyre not able to watch the movie with that irritating sound
@36
Im sure that was busted on Mythbusters! lol
This is why we pirates are pirating. Because anybody else is way too stupid lol
:D 
If they are doing this IN the THEATER, and not on screeners, then WHY would I go pay good money to see the film (-parts of the AUDIO) when I just wait a few months and I will buy the DVD version.
I was actually thinking of going to see Indy next week, but it looks like I will pick up the DVD (not Blu-ray) version probably out in August.
All they have done to ME is get me to pick up some DVD’s I might not have gotten otherwise, and to TURN AWAY FROM THE THEATER
so, does anyone know if the german copy’s been dubbed with the english one yet? i cant seem to find one.
#
Kraken
May 29th, 2008 | 16:19
Or another alternative is to get the sound from 2 different cinema and do a differential analysis, and recover the missing sounds clips.
JUST WHAT I WHERE THINKING…
If this would be an april 1th post, i’d say it sucked as a joke. BUT TO SEE THAT THIS IS ACTUALLY REAL. WOW, hollywood is taking the crazy up a notch.
budk1ng @ #56:
Yes, here:
Indiana.Jones.4 (Incl Missing Footage).TS.XVID-STG
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1447162
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4207415
This is the best that could be done considering that the German video was missing two important scenes, and that the prevail audio is a mess of digital stutter-steps due to the VBR audio being sync’d to the video by the encoder, and/or a glitchy digital recording of the source audio.
AND YES, there are three short audio drop-outs at 1:20:14, 1:20:26 and 1:20:29…
LOL, was a stupid idea, dumb ass multi billionaire dollar companies ROFL!!!
Oh, I forgot; In my (huge waste of time) failed attempt at dubbing this file, I saw the drop-outs, and simply covered them by either deleting the gap or copy|pasting adjacent audio to cover it. (I tried both to see which worked better, timing wise.) Now you can say that the studio could run the audio portion of the pirated copy through a computer comparing it to a reference copy, and expect it to spit out the only descrepencies, thereby exposing which copy (and by extension which theater) was the source, but you’d be wrong. There are SO MANY discrepancies, such as glitches, noise, VBR timing errors, etc. that a simple fix as I did would probably make it a nearly impossible task to I.D. the source. IF this is the method they’ve chosen, then they are whistling in the wind!
BTW, I could have done what the STG group did, but I was trying to sync-up the audio WITHOUT re-encoding the video, so it could be called “untouched”, but only the computer can keep up with the wandering of seperate clocks for the VBR audio and video encoders… (I need to sleep now - lol.)
They could have used this technology for The Empire Strikes Back.
Luke: Ben told me you killed my father!!!
Darth Vader:No, Luke. I a……
(silence)
Luke: NO!!!! THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!
Darth Vader: Search your feelings, Luke. You know it to be true.
Random silence in the soundtrack leads to anger, anger leads to, ya know….
> never heard of any copy protections or DRM in movies,
> games or music that were available in P2P networks.
Seriously? You must not download much…
Deacon Thorn
lmao
You’ve really got to figure the hypocrisy factor for these maggot studios – they “only” make billions off of these crappy movies that they (in reality) turn out like sausages (I know, I’ve worked on a couple) AND they keep making money off of them FOREVER due to residuals. I wish that everything that I did at work paid me over and over again every time somebody used it again!
What makes them TRULY hypocrites is the fact that the STUDIOS leak a lot of this sh*t for the free publicity. Want an example? How about the Street Kings workprints that were all over; they were being sold just blocks from the studio. THEY had numbers all over them, but did you hear of any studio employee(s) being arrested? NO, they got millions worth of free publicity when people like us downloaded these fuzzy copies, made a huge buzz about what a great movie it would be when it came out, then dutifully took our g/f’s (as did everyone you told) to the theater to see it. While there you probably dropped $70 USD on the tickets and the crap food, and got indoctrinated with all of the posters, trailers, etc., FORCING you to promise to take her back next week to see some chick flick that you wouldn’t even waist a blank DVD-R on!
Now sing “Happy Birthday to You” to me, and send the estate of Jessica Hill, via Harry Fox Agency and ASCAP a check for at least $37.00 USD for the royalties which will be required until the year 2030, unless they find yet another way to extend this teat they’ve nursed on since 1935. Yes, they’re being ROBBED by the scene; HOW WILL THEY SURVIVE?
See http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp
Great idea. But rather than drop sounds I’d add in some different sounds throughout the movie, very subtle and hard to catch.
@ #9, love your diea, maybe these idiots will stop watching cams or telecines.
@21
Your definitely from the UK xD
@27
Hahaha nice one!!!!!
I just went to the cinema yesterday and saw Indy. Our theatre was recently built, about a year ago. They told us they changed from Consolidated to Regal…my first thoughts were “oh great” (sarcasticly). Movie price was still the same, $6.50, however, the concessions were higher. I did notice some sound drops in audio, but didn’t think much about it until I read this. I dunno, I wouldn’t consider a small town 20miles out of Nashville, TN a hotspot for pirating. Anyhow, I doubt I will be going to the theatre anytime soon. I used to love going, at least once a week a few years ago before I became ill. Would even go buy 2-4 new dvd releases every Tuesday.
However, after getting an HD TV 9 months ago,I can’t even stand wathcing digital SD cable channels anymore… I am getting frustrated with comcast now. and with the new HP Mediasmart Technology and the recent post today of “tru2way” built in STB…When does it ever end…It seems you can’t even get scrambled digital HD through a computer tuner with a STB without jumping through hoops using firewire, or dropping 3k+ for ATI’s digital tuner only avaliable through specific partners(Dell, HP, Sony, etc…) or other more expensive cable card devices.
The appealing part of Vista, for me, is the Media Center, and Extenders. Extenders are only availiable through a few exclusive partners as well…all of which cost $300+…so even if you have an extender, what is the point…Spending money on a cable card tuner for a comp, that can’t even perform the same functions as a STB. It is beyound rediculous. All of these restrictions have come from piracy. The funny thing is, it hasn’t slowed piracy down one bit. The cable companies are nickle and diming everyone to death while compressing HD channels, and you can’t even get the NFL network without paying a silly insane yearly amount.
If American corprate companies weren’t so damn greedy, piracy wouldn’t be that much of an issue…all they are doing is creating more restrictions, pushing more people toward piracy.
But the average joe, who works 40+ hours a week, knows nothing about computers, and only gets to watch their HD TV through a cable STB($200/a month w/internet) for 3 hours a night is the real loser.
Sorry for the rant. Some might feel this off topic, in my view it is all related. I just wish people would wake up and realize what is going on. I could add a lot more but I feel my point has been made for the most part. =)
Looks like im not going to the theaters anymore then… LMAO…
i thought that’s what the ‘cigar burns’ were for.
I stopped going to the threater when the DVD’s came out on sale for cheaper than the wife and I could see it in the theater. cheaper food, no dumbasses talking, a rewind button, deleted scenes and extras, my comfortable couch….sounds like a no brainer
I`m a pretty calm person most of the time, but right now, with this idiots doing moronic things to try to stop the unstoppable everything is getting hazy around me, can barely hear my thought, skin turning green……. puny paramount, hulk smash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@56
Yes, it was done well over a week ago. The advantage of using private trackers. I suppose it will be on public ones soon for you.
@75
It was? Where? What release name? Did they insert the two missing scenes and fix the chopped ending? Is the audio track timing correct? Has the video been re-encoded without dropping a sh!t-load of frames?
memberme, if you take the sample from another source and move it over the dropped audio, as long as you line it up to be phase-accurate it’s going to null perfectly. incredibly small crossfades between clips are not going to be picked up by an editor if you do it at sample level. if done properly, there’s absolutely no way to tell.
Wow and these guys get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to come up with these “ingenious” ideas…hmm I guess college is over-rated!
A better idea is just to use contrast coded information in a specific frame since it is difficult to detect, and regardless even if they hit all the cinemas the problem is DVDs and DVDScrs will always come out and are much better quality anyway.
but isn’t them being idiots a GOOD thing for us?
@77
If the release groups simply look through the audio file and locate the gaps, then delete them or cover them with short clips of adjacent audio then the chance of detection is nil. There are so many similar errors in most scene aoudio files that the edits will just look like the other glitches. Unless they get Nasa to use a supercomputer and a team of experts to narrow the field to one of eight corrupt pimply-faced $6.00 per hour projectionists who will (in turn) each then point to all of the handicapped jacks at certain cineplex, then I think that they’re playing with themselves.
…………::JOKE OF THE WEEK::………….
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Seriously, that was about the most stupid thing I have heard! So… to avoid getting caught it would even be possible to simply drop the audio randomly on one more occation during the movie and suddenly it would say the moon instead of new york (just examples)when they try to match the audio drops to the location.
Pretty silly if you ask me. Wouldnt it be easier to lower the price on the cinema and the DVD? Less effort, less time wasted and less money spent on weird consultants and post release audio modifications to movies.
They remind me of old grumpy conservative white men. Doesnt matter if they are wrong, they rather kill the whole planet before they change their routines.
Gen X and Y FTW.
Okay, now I understand what they meant with “inaudible” watermarks.
that’s the stupidest anti-piracy move I’ve ever heard!!!!
I was looking forward to see this movie on theaters, now I won’t! Pay 16 bucks to not enjoy a movie ?
I hope retail DVDs do not get these f . u . c . k . i . g . auido gaps.
I’ll believe it when I DON’T hear it
There is a new development now: The theatre companies showing Indy 4 have ordered their theatres to post signs at the box office: PLEASE DO NOT BOTHER THE MANAGER ABOUT THE SOUND GAPS IN INDY 4 IT IS OUT OF OUR CONTROL. Heaven forbid paying customers should BOTHER the poor manager merely because they paid for am INTENTIONALLY faulty product…
If youre stupid enough to watch or even more so to record “cams” , you deserve to go to jail and get a good bumming for it . Whinging about a few sound drops ? line up for a bumming as well , get a life
Saw “The strangers” on friday, halfway through the movie they paused it for a good 15 seconds, i am not certain if this is related but it sure seems like it.
@#86
No, people aren’t complaining about their cam versions being silenced. They are complaining because customers who paid for a seat TO SEE IT IN THEATRES get to be punished by Paramount.
You seem kinda uptight. Maybe your best man needs to give you a good “bumming”.
@88 , read what I wrote . The sentence about seeing it in cinemas is seperate from the cams point . “Get punished” ? a few sound drops over a film and grizzling like a child for money back , uptight ? na , the internet seems made for people to whinge all the time … and not read properly it seems .