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Over 100 different versions of Avatar were shipped to theaters
- jamesbressi 17y agoDid anyone else assume the 100 different versions were for some sort of piracy identification? Meaning 100 different versions with just a slight change that no one would notice, but Cameron or the studio would be able to identify and help round down to what theater or region would have had that copy?
- mapleoin 17y agothen why stop at 100?
- unperson 17y agoAt some point you'll be spending more to stop piracy than you're losing because of it.
- andrewcooke 17y agowell, you might assume that once you get past some number (less, i would think, than 100) you can automate the process sufficiently to make each one distinct (if we are talking about "watermark" changes and not labour-intensive things like translations).
- pierrefar 17y agoI thought of that too, but decided it would have been easier to put "invisible" watermarks throughout the movie stream that can be detected even after compression. Say imperceptible color variations that a computer can pick up if it knows which frames to search.
- abentspoon 17y agoIt seems watermarking with a patern of dots is already popular, but embeding the watermark in a color histogram might be much less distracting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_code
- lanstein 17y agoI thought they used telltale sounds to detect the guy who they just caught in France, no?
- huherto 17y agoBefore reading the Article I thought it was about injecting special hidden marks in the movies to be able to detect if the movie was pirated, from which copy it was pirated. It occurred to me that that may be an interested solution for a problem we have. But I haven't been able to hit the right keywords to do the search. Can anyone give me suggestions on what to look for?
- mprovost 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy
- Splines 17y agoKudos to James Cameron for his attention to detail - shows that Avatar was really a labor of love.
- fjabre 17y agoYeah.. he's the Steve Jobs of film. No doubt about it.
- philwelch 17y agoOh, please. This is just good marketing, and the natural result of releasing something not only in n languages but also in k formats. Turns out n by k versions is a lot, and it's easy to make n by k versions of a film when the film is already digital.
- dood 17y agoThis was not marketing, easy, or common - this was exceptional attention to detail and focus on getting the highest quality experience to the customer, which Cameron should certainly be recognized for (whether you liked the film or not).
- philwelch 17y agoIt's hard work and it's innovative, but how is it not marketing?
- ars 17y agoA little background on the problem: Each type of 3D system has varying amount of cross-eye leak. And the leak varies by color (for some types of systems). So you need to adjust the color balance to compensate for how much light of each color arrives at each eye. The type of screen, and the size of the screen affects this as well. Ghostbusting is similar - some light leaks to the other eye, so you reduce the intensity of one side to balance them out.
- protomyth 17y agoWow, I guess having actual digital distribution will save some cash.