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Tamil Nadu
By K.T. Jagannathan
The solution aims at protecting a feature film fully from being copied illegally through telecine, casual camera shoot and similar methods. The solution, it is claimed, will ensure that no pirated copy is ever taken out of either the negative or positive through any method. The technology is christened `VidAPD' (Video is Asset; Prevent illegal Disc). H.S. Giridharan, chairman, said the software solution was demonstrated twice to the South India Film Chamber of Commerce. The SIFCC even appointed an expert panel under the chairmanship of film director, Balu Mahendra. The Chamber president, Mohan Sharma, has sounded the film trade bodies across the country ``to study the viability factor.'' According to Mr. Sharma, the panel ``found the technology suggested by the company feasible.'' Mr. Giridharan said the company had already gone for a provisional filing of global patent with the U.S. Patent and Trade Mark Office. Film piracy is mostly done in two ways — telecine and camera copy. Telecine is where the spool of the film roll is illegally taken out for a while and moved into the telecine equipment, which converts the entire movie into a video image. This is later copied into a DVD or a set of VCD discs. Under the `camera copy' method, the film is copied by taking an open shoot through a handy-cam or video camera inside a cinema hall when the movie is on. The proposed solution splits the film content into two — one as part of the celluloid film and the other as digital image frames to be projected through a digital projector. While the celluloid film is beamed through the existing analog projector, the digital frame images are projected through a high-resolution projector box having Liquid Crystal Display or Digital Light Processing or other advanced video panel technology with over 4000 lumens brightness. The digital frames are made by a high-resolution frame scan of the original negative coupled with colouring and grading to match the film positive quality. Select scenes are pulled out of the negative and are kept missing digital frames, which shall be interlaced in the theatre. The interlacing happens by identifying the missing frame images in the film using a frame identification sensor. These two forms of projectors alternate between themselves to ensure that the movie is properly screened without any jump in audio or visual output. Digital frames will be encoded and encrypted. These are kept in the form of Digital Versatile Discs. These are distributed along with the film rolls to each cinema hall. Further, the screen back is kept with special equipment emitting Infrared light rays. As a consequence, the image projected on the screen is distorted for video camera and other digital handy-cams. The audience, however, views the film normally because infrared rays are invisible to human eyes. A digital still camera fixed at the projector box records the picture at regular frequencies to figure out if the picture is a distorted one due to the equipment at the back. If the lights are off by chance, it will make the digital projector automatically switch off. This way, the movie should necessarily be screened with the light equipment switched `on' at the back, while the movie is projected using the analog and digital projectors interlacing the movie content. The film negative is made by the interlacing technique to remove select scenes and keep blank frames instead. Film positive is made normally using this interlaced negative and the entire sound track stays on the film roll itself as usual. The software solution will require every theatre to make a one-time investment to instal equipment, which facilitates it to run the film in the new method. The producer may have to pay for the special processing of the film as well for each movie produced and for every such print made. The one-time investment for the theatre is estimated at around Rs. 5 lakhs on an average. The producer may have to invest for every movie around Rs. 15,000 a print additionally.
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