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Automatic Scanning for Cameras in Theaters
An anonymous reader writes "A Florida firm claims to have found a solution for the movie industry to prevent bootlegging in theaters. Tom's Hardware carries a story about Trakstar, which demonstrated its 'PirateEye' technology in a Hollywood movie theater to journalists and movie industry representatives: The technology uses light impulses to detect video recording devices. A second component is an audio watermarking system."
The equipment is designed to be installed by theater management, and ALWAYS be running. If it's tampered with, a call center is notified. And if any "detections" are made, the same call center is notified, and then a live person makes the decision to notify the local theater's security and management. If it's not tampered with AND a camera detection isn't made, then the audio portion has a watermark that contains the exact theater and time the recording was made. See my post here.
There is a very large market for these so called "camera print" movies in Eastern countries like China, Korea and Malaysia. India is just beginning to get onto this. This mostly happens because English movies used to release in these countries a couple of months after the "international" release, and also because the average cost of a VCD/DVD is unbelievably high (singe movie = almost 20% of the average monthly income).
Someone takes a video, uploads it, and soon it's being copied all over the world in tiny shops with 2-3 burners. I suppose this is one of the main problems they are trying to solve.
StrayByte.Net
CCDs pickup infrared signals as a bright white spot. All the theaters would have to do is get the movie screen to eminate some infrared, and that's that.
Of course, in that case, there is no monthly service fee to pay Trakstar for their Alarm Force-like service.
ATTENTION MOVIE PATRONS: WE HAVE NOTICED SOMEONE IS USING A CAMERA. TRAKSTAR RECOVERY PERSONELLE HAS BEEN DISPATCHED.
Somehow the camera is supposed to respond to this. My knee jerk reaction was that all you needed to do was put tape over the remote control sensor and you would be good to go.
Apparently, the system strobes the theater with a low-intensity light (visible wavelength, it says on their page (strange)), and records images of the public in the IR range.
It seems that camera-lenses reflect that light, and that these reflections can be recorded.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that you would still like to record your movie in the cinema, even though getting it through suprnova is much easier. Then the only thing you need to make sure is that your camera doesn't reflect light in the IR spectrum. A good lens-coating (having a broad stopband in IR) could do that. Using a very small lens (pin-hole camera) could do it.
Beware: They list that the system can't be fooled by, say, pin-hole cameras for two reasons: Marketing, and FUD. I don't believe, not for a moment, that one can detect a pin-hole camera like this.
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Astronomers have developed filters for CCD to prevent infrared from getting in. I'm not sure how they would affect the rest of the recording of a movie in dim light, but they likely would foil this system.
This system is NOT automatic.
m l
Heres what I found:
PirateEye's hidden cameras scan a movie audience, eight seats at a time, looking for things resembling a camcorder lens. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to scan a 1,000-seat audience. Images are sent to a technician watching a computer screen, who might be monitoring several theaters at a time from as far away as India, according to S&EA. Potential camcorder lenses are indicated on the computer screen with tiny red dots.
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000097.ht
liqbase
The CCD sensor array in a digital camera is sensitive to IR light. This is easily shown.. Take your webcam, plug it in and get it to display what it sees on your computer screen. Point an IR remote control at it and hit a button. You'll see a white/red flash on the camera's output.
CCD's see IR, people don't. So if they flood the room with IR from several locations, it'll ruin any digital recording devices ability to see the film without affecting your ability to see it. This works for all camcorders, more or less.
You could use a lens that filters the IR out to prevent this from working though, and it's a short step to figuring that out too.
As far as the detection portion of that goes, I have no idea how that would work.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Not true. The filter will only increase the transmission of IR lightwaves. The more the filter blocks the wavelength, the more successful the anti-pirate camera will be. Keep in mind that the anti-pirate camera is filming the reflection off of the filter. Most modern camcorders use chips that are ultra-sensitive to IR wavelengths. In order to block it, filters are installed behind the lens. By beaming an IR lightsource into the theater, you can pick up any filter in the audience-- it will glow light a flame.
The anti-pirate camera is filming the reflection off of the IR filter on the camcorder. Most modern camcorders use chips that are ultra-sensitive to IR wavelengths. In order to block it, filters are installed behind the lens. By beaming an IR lightsource into the theater, you can pick up any filter in the audience-- it will glow light a flame.
Remember the Sony "nightvision" cameras that caused the uproar over filming through clothes? The camera had the ability to shunt the IR filter to the side and film in near-infrared.
I will repost this here for completeness.
m l
1 07 87737
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This system is NOT automatic.
Heres what I found:
PirateEye's hidden cameras scan a movie audience, eight seats at a time, looking for things resembling a camcorder lens. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to scan a 1,000-seat audience. Images are sent to a technician watching a computer screen, who might be monitoring several theaters at a time from as far away as India, according to S&EA. Potential camcorder lenses are indicated on the computer screen with tiny red dots.
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000097.ht
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Thats from a posting I made deeper in the comments. I think it might help with your clarifications.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129343&cid=
liqbase
No, it *doesn't* work like that. On their home page, in bold type:
Note: PirateEye(TM) does not utlize LASER technology.
If I were them, I'd take an IR picture, then illuminate with IR from in front and take another picture then compare the difference. Most objects don't reflect IR light, comparing things takes people, etc. out of the equation and then you're just left with shiny objects.
You might be able to look at the locations of shiny objects (height, whether there are two of them right next to each other) to see whether you think the objects are people's glasses or a real camcorder. I'd have thought there'd be an *awful* lot of human input to make this useful, though. Basically, I can't see how you'd even approach being able to make this reliable in an automated way.