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."

Comments

Bootlegging

[Liselle]

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.

Re:Bootlegging

[Tethys_was_taken]

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.

Re:Bootlegging

[ajs]

Seems to me that the solution is to take a bunch of these bad camcorder recordings and merge them. You should easily be able to compensate for the skew from different seating locations and jitter by comparing 3 or more recordings and establishing a sense of where the screen is in each and what how the screens map to each other.

That blurs the watermarking, can allow you to improve the image quality, remove problems like people standing up and getting in the way, etc.

Audio watermarking is also defeatable. Someone slide an engineer at this company a few k for the specs and you can just use Felton's approach.

This post is not meant to encourage anyone, I'm just trying to point out to the industry (in case they're listening) that an arms race is not a particularly wise course of action. To quote The Hunt For Red October, "this will get out of control."

This would be good on a backpack

[stecoop]

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.

For "inside jobs", too

[daveschroeder]

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

Cameras filming cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this going to affect my ability to bring in and drink beer at the movie theater?

Something I've wanted for years ...

[torpor]

.. 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..)

Great technology.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

How the hell would this work.

[the_weasel]

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

Re:How the hell would this work.

[ControlFreal]

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.

Actually, this is meant for inside jobs too

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:Actually, this is meant for inside jobs too

[Marc2k]

Simple, I learned this from Murdoch on the A-Team.

All you need to do is take a polaroid of the movie theatre from the detector's perspective, then affix something to prop up the polarioid in front of the detector. Voila!

Re:Actually, this is meant for inside jobs too

[Cecil]

If it's tampered with, a call center is notified.

I guess the pirates have nothing to be afraid of then. Nothing useful ever came out of talking to a call center.

What the system should do...

[stubear]

...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.

Re:PirateEye in Action

[micromoog]

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.

Simple solution..

[GrBear]

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.

Re:Simple solution..

[Gordonjcp]

Huge scrolling LED sign, behind the screen, that constantly scrolls the message "TAKE YOUR FUCKING CAMERA OUT OF HERE" all through the movie.

Why not "wash out" the cameras?

[theguru]

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.

Make fun of them!

[AndreyFilippov]

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!

Neurons in the brain need about 40 ms

[dpbsmith]

"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 it works, really

[Animats]

This technology has been around for years in the intelligence community. It was first used to determine whether a satellite had a camera.

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.