It's become harder to get clean(ish) audio captures for theater films, but it's not impossible. There are still theaters with hearing impaired seating and headphone hookups, still a few drive-in theaters that broadcast via FM (one of those here in Reno, actually).

If anything, I think it's because digital rips/DLs seem to come out more quickly. By the time a group has tracked down a clean audio stream and takes the time to sync it with footage, someone's probably snagged a digital copy and released it.

Now Telecines, those are basically unseen these days. Almost no theaters still use actual film, and the few that do are way more careful about their inventory management. Gone are the days when a whole film can just get "misplaced" for a few days while someone with a Telecine setup copies it, to say nothing of how few people have the setup for Telecine anymore in the first place.

[–] parody@lemmings.world 18 points 1 month ago

Might have to make a new post about this:

How are there still cams if there’s been anti-piracy watermarks reported on since at least 2006?

Maybe the pirates never hit the same theater twice in a row… travel to different cities… only record at any given theater once every few years… then you’d need resources to catch somebody I’d guess.

I expect not all theaters can afford to send guys in with night vision goggles:

Maybe that’s outdated now since they can just throw up IR cameras:

Corrupt theater manager or shifty projectionist: no camera/security concerns, but still watermark concerns

Regular theatergoer: both camera/security concerns AND watermark concerns

Gutsy pirates out there!

[–] parody@lemmings.world 11 points 1 month ago

This is the exact kind of thing I was hoping someone would chime in with. Thanks for the interesting info!

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Man I fucking hate telesyncs...I accidentally downloaded a TS deadpool&wolverine because I got so exited when I saw it that I didn't read the title properly so I didn't notice the "TS". I was so disappointed when I wanted to watch that and found out it was TS. 100% my own fault, but still sucked.

[–] Melody@lemmy.one 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Watermarks are only an issue in-as-much as it is used to trace down which copy was leaked.

With modern digital projection systems; you don't get a reel of film; you get a briefcase of [SS/HD]Ds containing the raw, encrypted, footage. The digital projection system will decrypt using provided keys. There's no output except the standard ones for the theatre projectors and sound systems...so capturing the output is difficult.

If you do intercept the signal; the projection system might detect it; and refuse playback or wipe the decryption keys. Watermarking is also a danger; since your theater can get identified as the leak source and sued.

[–] parody@lemmings.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Read about those DCP drives! Maybe cammers are just burning theaters one by one and careful not to return for a long time if ever.

A theater operator doing the recording would be wildly risky it seems unless watermarking has been defeated. Visual and audio watermarking perhaps.

Seems like they’re very comfortable with applying watermarks at least for those betting sites!

[–] Melody@lemmy.one 5 points 1 month ago

It occurs to me that adding a visual watermark might actually serve to obscure a visual watermarking scheme that is otherwise invisible by providing data that scrambles or breaks the watermark decoder itself.

Audio watermarks can be distorted in any number of ways; and it could be that some of the wildly poor audio quality in most cam-rips is probably the only way you can defeat the watermark; by using a LQ microphone and encoding the audio to a very limited bitrate and then re-upsampling; to defeat any subtle alterations a digital watermark might make to the audio waveform.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

Yup. Some are pretty advanced now.