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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."
Ahh yes, the solution to bootlegging in theatres. How much of a problem is this anyway, though? I've seen copies of movies taken by some guy with a camcorder... the audio quality is always lousy, people chatter in the background, and there is invariably some big guy who takes a popcorn break right in the middle of the movie. We won't get into the video aspect, which is dog awful. Sounds like someone solving a non-problem, as usual.
The real issue are those screeners, which they've made some progress with (I hear), and the people who work in the theatres, which will be difficult. I doubt someone getting paid close to minimum wage is going to care about your IP. Watermarking sounds promising.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Let's turn this technology around for our use in civil liberties; thus, making the product a threat. I would like to have this in a backpack. Imagine if it could detect a camera from several hundred yards and direct a laser (preferably mounted on a shark) to that camera thwarting intrusive surveillance. Yeah lets see how long until the Men in Black would allow this.
But really, the issue at hand is cameras in theaters. Is the bootleg market that big? I have seen some movies that were recorded with a camcorder and they were funnier to watch the action of recording than the movie. The market has to adjust to the viewing habits; it appears people may want to watch new movies using alternative methods (aka internet). Don't most movies nowadays make more money from DVD sales then the actual movie? I wonder if the movies were released simultaneously to theaters, DVD, video on demand, video of Internet, etc if this would be an issue?
Now lets bring the two views together from paragraph 1 and 2. Just as the public sector adapt to use changing technology, the movie industry needs to adapt to the situation.
Looks like it's also being promoted as a tool to prevent employees from doing the pirating themselves: the "PirateEye" camcorder detector and the "TrakStar TVS" audio watermarking system, ostensibly installed by theater management, are apparently connected, and if one is disconnected from the other, loses power, or is otherwise tampered with, TrakStar's call center (a paid service, I'm sure) is notified, which can then make an independent decision to call security: Is the movie supposed to be exhibited now? Is the anti-piracy equipment still intact and functioning? This is in addition to the tracking information that audio watermarking can provide (i.e., to certain theaters and certain times, narrowly identifying "offenders").
You can bet a company like this is angling to position itself to be EVERYWHERE, much like Macrovision - and then, one wonders if "offending" theaters will be punished by, say, having new releases withheld?
http://trakstar.net/solutions.htm
Is this going to affect my ability to bring in and drink beer at the movie theater?
stuff
i thinx cameras are the lest of the movie industry's worry . try patching up the holes were the screeners are comming from first.
.. is a brute-force attack against CCD's and other camera optics.
Some sort of electronic/optical flash system that, when activated, overblows CCD's, or otherwise interferes with their operation.
Then I could sell it to guys like this and make a fortune...
(And before you liberties people get started, I believe I have a right to not get my picture taken, when I want not to get my picture taken..)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Once the DVD's hit the shelves in any country, the stuff will be on the net anyway.
Sharing it could become easier and safer also: I2P --- an anonymous onion-routing network --- now has a functional BitTorrent client that functions completely within I2P (tracker, peer-to-peer traffic, everything).
For those on I2P, get it here: http://duck.i2p/i2p-bt/files/i2p-bt-0.1.0.tgz (this URL only works when you're running I2P).
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Now can they invent some kind of device that detects shitty movies? A shitty footage detector could be used during shooting and editing to stop shitty movies before they start.
The companion shitty dialogue filter would be indispensible as well.
This still won't work because all the good movies rips come from France or England.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Okay, reading the scanty information they provide seems to indicate that it does its trick by bathing the room with IR light.
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.
But they would undoubtedly have thought to create a system more resistant to spoofing than that. So I am stumped. I assume they are relying on some response from the lens? The feature list says it can't be fooled by pinhole cameras or even filters on the lenses, so thats what I base my guess on.
Anyone with more information care to speak up?
Which i thought was pretty funny. Read
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
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.
...if it detects a video camera in the theaters is stop the film, turn the lights on, and make an announcement that there is a person in the theater who is illegally recording the movie and this is the cause for the delay. The movie will commence once the perpetrator has been identified and leaves the theater. Come to think of it, this system should search for obnoxious kids and cell phones too.
But you must admit that this gives you the real cinema feeling. If there was a smell of popcorn and artificial butter it would be undistinguishable from a real cinema...
Watermarking sounds promising.
Watermarking? Sounds like something my dog also finds interesting.
I don't need a signature.
I am just counting down to the point when someone releases a filter to block all light on this wavelength. You might even be able to make one with stuff you can currently buy at the DIY shop. This would not effect the filming because the light it would filter is not visible. To this 'detector' the camera's lens with the filter would show as a black blob (non-detectable).
This technology will be really easy to block.
I believe that's a monacle. The guy also has a large canvas bag with "$" marked on it in the seat next to him, under his top hat.
Why don't the theater owners strategically place high output infrared (LEDs) light sources behind the screens. Since most of the screens are full of holes, it should allow enough infrared light through to severly mess up the image recorded by the camcorders.
For those that don't understand, CCD cameras are highly sensitive to infrared light and will produce a white hotspot. Try it some time with your camcorder.. press a button on a remote while holding it infront of the camera and watch the results in the viewfinder. The higher output the IR, the bigger and more pronounced the hotspot would be.
First, I find it humerous that a number of the first people to post comments all mentioned that they had watched pirated movies.
/.'s readership is known for, I find that interesting.
Second, I have not seen a single post that adequately states how this technology really works. Given the level of technical ability
My guess? CCD cameras almost always use an infrared filter. They have to or the color gets screwed up. This technology bathes the theater in infrared light and the camera simply picks up the reflection off of the filter. Take off the filter and you mess up the image. Keep it on, and your camera glows.
Here's a simple, possibly flawed idea. Install some high powered IR emitters around the screen. Most CCD cameras I've played with picked up invisible to the naked eye IR (like from a TV remote) as very bright white light. A halo of IR emitters, (possibly strobes?) shouldn't be noticeable by you and me sitting in the theater, but for an unfiltered camera would really wreck any quality of picture possible.
Is the sharing of "handycam" pirated movies really so much of a problem? This smells to me like a smart company marketing a product to an industry that still doesn't seem to "get" what's happening.
I see news stories all the time about these "bandits" being caught in cinemas with recording devices - but anyone I know who downloads movies deletes anything that turns out to have been recorded this way. Instead, the vast, vast majority of the content available on p2p networks are high quality rips from the screener DVD produced to market the film before its release.
Most of the time, these versions are not only of far higher quality but are available online days or even weeks before the film is even in theaters.
If the cinemas really want to "solve" this problem, maybe they should lean on their distributors a little to change their obscene pricing so the tickets don't need to cost so much and the establishments don't need to inflate refreshments so ludicrously to maintain profitability.
Will the update system be called "EyePatch"?
do not read this line twice.
A quick visit to suprnova.org lists many screeners and much better digital quality movies that arent handheld captured from a theater. They should look in their own backyard and find out who leaks these movies instead of concentrate on shitty quality handhelds.
Since the system appears to detect only a camera lens, and not an active recording, why not attach a few lenses to your jacket (k001 l334 badgez, right), etc. After the "human verification" agent checks out a few hundred false alarms, the system fails.
ALso, I hope they aren't trying to trademark all the quoted phrases on ther web page.....
on a tripod.
Admittedly, I didn't read the story, I just jumped to the "demonstration." The demo seemed less than impressive as it showed that the "Pirate Eye" thing, found two shady looking characters sittinging in an oterwise empty theater sitting next to a tripod with a couple of large popcorn bags sitting on top with holes cut in them.
Now certainly a less sophisticated detection method could be used to weed these guys out.
One way (almost the only way) it can work (to my naive mind) is if it's looking for a spectral component assoc. with CCD litho or possibly p/n junctions or .x mm-sized diffractive features. IOW, it's looking for an optical characteristic specific to a chip. Big tautology, but i'm a simple mind...
This suggests that if we were to deploy a handful of EEPROM-typ chips (the UV-erasable things with the little windows) around the theater, we could probably spoof the system with false positives.
it's a thought.
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.
Screeners suck anyway. I'd love it if someone introduced a technology to keep them to a minimum. The REALLY cool thing about this technology is that you'll be able to use it to know if there is a hidden camera somewhere. Screw the theater. Wait til you can use this technology to find hidden camera's anywhere.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
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.
The only way I can think of you can detect a camera is a "red eye" effect. To make it not disturbing for viewers you have to make it invisible and so much less effective as the cameras have IR cutoff filters inside. So there are at least 2 things that can be done about that:
1. Use additional high quality dielectric IR cutoff filters in front of the camera lens and
2. Make fun of them - take pieces of reflective tape (maybe cut as circels) or bycicle reflectors and stick them to the walls and chairs in the theater. Make it look as there are dozens of cameras recording the show!
The camera had the ability to shunt the IR filter to the side and film in near-infrared.
If you put this filter/beamsplitter in front of the lens you could reflect the IR from the anti-pirate system off to the side, much like a stealth plane reflects radar to somewhere other than the detector. A little bit of careful beamsplitter/filter selection and the camera is invisible again, and can still see the screen.
Then they'll start putting detectors all over the theater to catch the light that pirates reflected off to the side, and the pirates will start bouncing the light to the side and into a cavity where it's absorbed, and the detector people will look for the missing energy, and it will go on and on, and as the pirates have to get more sophisticated they'll start being producing even better quality bootlegs, and getting into a movie will be worse than going through airport security, which will make otherwise avid moviegoers want bootlegs even more....
Why don't they just release movies all over at about the same time and save everyone the trouble?
"The impulses are only 20 ms in length. Neurons in the brain need about 40 ms to recognize the light source."
What garbage! By that reasoning, the flash from a camera ought to be invisible.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You can buy a handheld SpyFinder. Here's a customer review with a discussion of how it works. It uses two lasers, one on the optical axis and one slightly off it, run alternately at a few Hz. Things that have focusing optics followed by a flat reflective surface (which includes most cameras) will blink. Ordinary shiny things will not.
Yes, I'm sure - the Thunderbirds all had camera detectors! I remember. They beeped if you pointed a camera at them - I'm sure I remember an episode where it happened. (I looked - try "Martian Invasion" .. you can look it up yourself if you like.
They could save a bunch of money and get on from Tracy and co.
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