I’ve seen a few throughout my life at friend’s houses as a kid during the age of Limewire. Typically they were pretty good quality even though you’d see the odd person get up from their seat or hardcoded subtitles. Lately I’ve been curious about the history behind them and how they came to be.
Have there been well known release groups similar to the game cracking scene?
Have they always been mostly from one region?
Are they released strategically for one reason or another?
Have there been hidden methods to bust groups after a release such as steganography?
I’d be down to hear any facts about it you find interesting, stories, and if you have any articles or videos about the subject.
Well you see, when a pirate and a camcorder love each other very much, they go to a movie theater…
̶B̶o̶w̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶c̶k̶a̶ ̶w̶o̶w̶ ̶w̶o̶w̶ Bow chicka record now.
This actually sounds like a great topic for a documentary
I’d watch a two hour YouTube video on that
I’d put it in “Watch Later” and never actually end up watching it.
There’s so much I should finally watch.
I’d even get the Xvid DVDrip of it, but never the cam rip they are vile 😂
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in this thread mention Telecines at all. It’s a machine that captures the video and audio from the film print directly to digital. A lot of good Cam rips were filmed from the projection booth, and could conceivably be done by a projectionist surreptitiously. Telecines though, required a large piece of equipment and time with a print outside of hours. Likely you’d need to be a manager or owner to get away with it, or have their blessing.
I remember the excitement of finding a Telecine for a movie in theatres rather than a Cam. It felt like striking gold. I bet the people releasing those in scene groups would be treated like gods back then.
Also, Telesyncs, which would be labelled TS, is when you have that high quality cam recording and sync it to a direct recording of the audio. The audio often came from the FM microbroadcast that are designed for hearing-aid users.
Don’t even get me started on how audio is included on a 35mm film print. Dolby Digital is an image of a digital signal (basically a QR code) that is between the cog-wheel holes on one side. Good Telecine machines are able to record the full surround track from this. That used to be the absolute best you could get while something was still in theatres. Often better than award copies, they had no stupid watermarks.
Significant part of camrips now is sponsored by non-licensed gambling operators who literally pay tens of thousands dollars to bootleggers who can film latest releases and bring recording to them on exclusive basis. There’s even some habitual bootleggers who film camrips for their living. So when you watch camrip of the latest hollywood title which is spammed with gambling ad watermarks then most likely this casino/betting operator has paid someone to record the screening.
Back in the day, and probably even now, as I used to encounter them when I lived in the big city, cam copies were famous on the streets. It was the only way to get a bootleg copy while the movie was still in theatres but you didn’t want to go for whatever reason.
When I lived in the big city, in a not so great area, the guys used to be in the grocery store parking lot or barbers or smoke shops selling the DVDs and before that were selling VHS copies.
And then when LimeWire grew in popularity, people would upload those like they would any retail DVD. And then went on to torrents as those grew in popularity.
And it still continues today for similar reasons. People want the fame that comes with uploading the first copy online or the first decent quality.
Was about to write the same thing as your last paragraph, the “wanting to be first” aspect. But you also made me realize how Cam rips might have been an important service in the past. Today we are drowned in new web-dl stuff constantly
We definitely are. We started to get a little spoiled back then when those DVD quality bootlegs came around too. Like screeners from another country but in English and a watermark on them somewhere lol. And then the cam quality were something most people turned their nose up at, even if that’s all was available.
Kind of funny now that I say that…that deters a lot of people from cam quality and does today as well. If all I can find is cam, forget it. I’ll wait until the DVD/stream is released. But I wait so I can get that in pirate form. I bet others, like my friend who asks me to upload a copy to my Plex server, goes to the movies instead of pirating since cam is all that is available.
But I’ve been burned by some bad cams. Like not just bad video and audio quality but also people standing up in front of the camera or being too loud and I can’t even hear or see the movie.
I downloaded team america world police on my computer when it came out, which ended up being a screener copy. My friend in college thought I was a hacker
In Italy between the movies were screening in the cinemas and dvd releases there was a wait time of 3 months. Exactly three months. The most common way of piracy was streaming websites (like cineblog nowadays) pestered with ads. Before the age of WEBDL most people who couldn’t pay for the cinemas and everybody who wanted to have lots to talk about pop arts and trends was watching cam rips. The quality of cam rips were ever increasing every year with specialized forums discussing hardware to do it. I remember you could find everything from low quality phone cams (we are talking 2006 phone cameras) rips to tv quality cameras pointed to the screen from inside the cinemas with tripods.
Project X was such a hyped up movie in Italy that I personally witnessed a bunch of people recording it in the cinemas and everybody at school was sharing the phones on which the movie was recorded during lessons.
To be honest camrips started to disappear during and after covid, but even now for very famous movies like Barbie and Hoppeneimer of Marvel stuff people are still downloading those.
For reference:
- avg ticket price in italy: 6.25 euro in 2022, 5.75 euro in 2016. If you count inflation, price basically decreased over the years
- most cinemas do many cheap ticket nights like for students or young people aimed at 2-5 euro range for tickets once a week or once a month
- more realistically, most cinemas have tickets for 8 or 9 euros, 10 to 12 euros in big cities
- around 60% of people earn less than 1300 euro net per month. That is an hourly pay of ~5 euros. You can understand how much a movie night for a family with popcorns and various extra may cost for a family.
Some family friends brought back cam rips from Egypt of several Disney movies, Beauty and the beast, Aladdin, and a couple others.
They had strange ads for burgers in Arabic, and the cam was really low quality.
We didn’t really know any better being kids, so I always thought that Beauty and the Beast was a dark, terrifying, grainy, nightmarish movie.
Having seen the real version, I have to say the shitty cam copy stuck better in my mind.
Anyways, sorry I can’t answer any of your questions OP.
That reminded of the shitty cam print of Iron Man 1. Started from the Humvee scene a minute before getting blown off. 20-30% was dark or pointed at floor for whatever reason. Godawful audio.
Thought it was a shitty movie halfway though and stopped. Got a good print after Iron man 2 released and faithfully watched all marvel release, many in cinemas, till Infinity war. Now its all available on Disney+ and I won’t watch the new ones after it.
In the last 10 years, I stopped in this gas station off a busy road in my home town. They have bootleg dvds just on the counter.
I can’t believe that place didn’t get shutdown. There is a police station just a few blocks away.
Same as it was in my neighborhood. Smoke shops would have them on display under a glass counter. I assumed it was somehow legal for a long time.
Just not something local cops care enough about. Hell, local cops are probably buying those copies too.
It’s the FBI that does the enforcement of those laws, and more so only comes down when the MPAA lawyers are aware of it. And neither FBI or MPAA are aware until it’s a bigger operation, like a series of 76 gas stations across the west coast are all selling bootlegs and the regional manager is in on it or something. But the local gas station or neighborhood barber shop? Too small to care about and would bring more negative publicity since the neighborhood would be highly upset attacking a small business owner like that.
Good point! I’d be to scared to buy one as it might be an undercover op 😂😂
Plus it’s too easy to get online for free anyway.
I also find these fascinating, mainly because I have absolutely no idea why anyone watches them. They look and sound awful and if you maintain just a modicum of patience you can have a significantly better experience a few months later.
The image quality is better than what it was, and the sound can be okay if captured directly instead of the theater room’s audio (some theaters offer audio jack for accessibility purposes).
I watched one by accident a few weeks ago. It was the audio that threw me off. You could hear people chatting. But the video looked not half bad - I figured it had just been transcode poorly or something.
I remeber downloading a cam version of Hunger games without realising at the time and the sound was fine, but the video was so shaky it felt I was hunger gaming myself
I had a job doing this. I went to see Death Blow with my friend and he brought his friend, Brody, along. Just as the movie starts he pulls out a camcorder and starts filming!
I thought it was crazy. Anyway after a while Brody gets real sick in the stomach from too much candy. My friend had to take him home, but before he leaves Brody pulls a damn gun on me and says I have to finish recording the movie!
I didn’t know what to do so I just said yes and took the camcorder. I had no idea what I was doing, so I just pointer at the screen and tried to hide from the attendants.
I couldn’t believe it, when I gave Brody the recording he said it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, he even called me a genius! My bootleg tape was a smash hit. He asked if I could go film an ‘arty’ movie next, Cry, Cry Again. I was torn up inside, as I disagreed with bootlegging but didn’t want to say no to Brody. So I asked my friend to ghost-film it for me. But when I saw the crap he recorded I refused to let it go out under my name. I demanded we re-film, with three camcorders throughout the theater with headsets to coordinate. Brody said no, so I quit right there.
In the end the version my friend filmed went out, but my other friend accidentally taped over the ending with her dancing. Oh, and my other friend tried to take up bootlegging to impress a girl, but he got arrested and cried.
Anyway, what’s the deal with airline peanuts?
