Another blow to sound quality?

[pinkmouse]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...mg18825246.000

[darkfenriz]

The watermark is introduced when the soundtrack is being mixed, by slightly varying the waveform of speech and music at regular intervals. The variations are too subtle to be audible, but the pattern can easily be detected by a decoder in the player.

It is more than obvious that mp3-encoding and then decoding will vanish the watermark. Simple and powerful weapon.
Hm.. I have Polish mentality, probably... damn.

[anatech]

Sad and completely unnecessary. The sub code has been used in the past for this. This would involve zero impact on audio and video. In audio, this sub code flag can turn off the digital output. Therefore preventing a direct digital copy.

Besides, a pirate made in this fashion would be inferior to the original. I'll bet that can be cracked as well.

Why not reduce the cost of the original, therby making it not worthwhile to copy?

-Chris

[sss]

Originally posted by anatech


Why not reduce the cost of the original, therby making it not worthwhile to copy?

-Chris

this will take a long time till they'll understand that
people that making illegal copies dont care much about sound/video quality , they just wanna listen to the albom / see the movie .
the first time i was introdused to the internet , when i had a dial up 28k modem , i was downloading music in poor real media format , very bad quality, i didnt realy care about the quality .....
it takes one computer genious to crack that system up and post the movie without the "defence" next day on the internet ....

[Steve Eddy]

Does everyone here understand that the watermark will ONLY be on the soundtrack of theatrical prints sent to movie theaters and NOT on the soundtracks of the DVDs?

Just seems that some are thinking it'll be on the DVD. It won't.

se

[maxro]

Originally posted by Steve Eddy
Does everyone here understand that the watermark will ONLY be on the soundtrack of theatrical prints sent to movie theaters and NOT on the soundtracks of the DVDs?

Just seems that some are thinking it'll be on the DVD. It won't.

se

If you read the whole article, then you will see that the DVDs will also have a (different) watermark.

If they don't want people making copies, then why don't they just release some awesome new format and NOT sell a consumer burner for it. The whole piracy thing is ridiculous when the big record/movie companies are the ones making copying devices and blank media readily available to everyone.

Max

[Steve Eddy]

Originally posted by maxro
If you read the whole article, then you will see that the DVDs will also have a (different) watermark.

Could you quote that portion? I've re-read the article and can't find anytying in it which says that.

se

[DSP_Geek]

Originally posted by Steve Eddy
Does everyone here understand that the watermark will ONLY be on the soundtrack of theatrical prints sent to movie theaters and NOT on the soundtracks of the DVDs?

Just seems that some are thinking it'll be on the DVD. It won't.

se

Y'know, last year I would've agreed with you, but after the Sony rootkit flap and news of the RIAA/MPAA suing grandmothers for what their descendents did, I can't help but think they won't give a rat's patoot about audio quality: they'll just dub the DVDs off the theatrical prints, watermark or no.

On the other hand, there's been some work a few years ago about resynthesizing material in digital dropouts from the spectral content around the missing portion, which worked surprisingly well - you could still detect something was awry, but the overall effect was much less annoying than a dropout. I can't help but think this same technology could restore the missing spectral lines, especially since there's much more information for reconstruction.

The **AA can bite me until their gums bleed.


Francois.

[Steve Eddy]

Originally posted by DSP_Geek
Y'know, last year I would've agreed with you, but after the Sony rootkit flap and news of the RIAA/MPAA suing grandmothers for what their descendents did, I can't help but think they won't give a rat's patoot about audio quality: they'll just dub the DVDs off the theatrical prints, watermark or no.

Not that I underestimate their stupidity, but if they did that, it would be beyond stupitity as the players wouldn't play the DVDs.

If you read the article, you'll see that the watermark is intended to be ONLY on the soundtracks of the theatrical prints so that if someone goes to the theater and records the film using a camcorder or nabs a print and makes a telecine copy of it onto disc, the watermark will also be in those copies and the players are designed to check for the watermark and if it finds it, to not allow the DVD to be played.

Therefore, if the legal DVDs used the same watermarked soundtrack as the theatrical prints, the player would detect it, think it was an illegal copy and wouldn't play it at all. So, you wouldn't have to worry about the watermark affecting the sound quality as you wouldn't get any sound in the first place.

se

[maxro]

Originally posted by Steve Eddy


Could you quote that portion? I've re-read the article and can't find anytying in it which says that.

se

"New movie discs will have a different, consumer audio watermark. If a player senses this it will check whether the disc was factory pressed, and if not, shut down."


Max