yeah, I've been thinking that more and more. I wouldn't be surprised at all that once Telstra's gone, the ABC is next. After all, the libs love selling stuff off, and while they have total control, there's isn't much to stop them.


I wonder how many of the staff (especially those that reply to the emails) have realised this possibility. Nothing like supporting something that could then end-up in a sale and job losses

On a side note, I was watching 4+3 last night, the Seven wonders of the Ancient World. I don't watch much of the commercials these's days and now I know why.
If the normal watermark isn't enough, before the ads, they slap up a solid "world around us" (clearly they are now going to start watermark branding specific shows with names, etc, eg, Today Tonight and now this).
Then, of course there was all the banner ads, pretty sure it was after EVERY ads break, or it sure felt that way.
And, finally, it didn't finish at 7.30, which is starting to be pretty normal for 7 lately, allways going 5 minutes over, so its either see the end or miss the start on another channel. This is of course all done on purpose.

And to top it off, it wasn't really all that good anyway, or maybe I'm just being unfair, in comparing it too that series of 7 shows "Seven wonders of the industrial world" that was on the ABC (pre watermark) late last year.

probably like my last full time job.

14 years of service, the whole department was told we were doing "world class" work, (and we probably were), right up until the time we were all "outsourced or downsized" because we were offically "sub-standard crap". (This all happened in time for "the float").

The executives who did it all gave them seleves a bonus and a few got promotions.
Service levels nose-dived, (I was in contact with a few survivors), and oddly enough the money saved by getting rid of us was never passed on as savings to the customers.

How are your car insurance rates? or does notrhing really matter anymore?

No WM on Decay Pt.03 here in Sydney.

Making up for Pt.01?
Or someone asleep at the wheel ?
Or just more decay ?

Well, the WM was still there in Adelaide, but one thing that did surprise me.....
there was no voiceover during the credits, thats got to be a first.

No watermark on DW on saturday night here in Sydney.
(It looks so much better that way).

Not that I care as I'm lucky enough to have seen the whole
series weeks ago, water(brand)mark free.

Just wondering - does anyone know how ABC's ratings compare with this time last year? I know I read stuff somewhere that said the ABC was about 15.8%, down from over 17% last year.

Any reliable figures?

Cheers

The figures I have seen, the ABC is down 6%, with SBS going up 10%. Now that SBS is now unwatchable, SBS will no doubt go back down again.

ct

Posted this to the SBS thread, but of some relevance here too:


A friend of mine rang SBS last night and got an anti-piracy spiel. Which got me thinking that I should inform those on this list of what a quick Google revealed on better alternatives.
So, what invisible technologies exist for copyright protection?

I found at least 4:

Philips WaterCast
Kodak Digital Cinema
iTrace
VideoMark

I'm not sure how good these are, but it seems that Hollywood is at least smart enough to know that degrading its images is not a solution. The fact is, this technology goes back 7 or 8 years, and is a far more sophisticated and effective means of copyright protection. In the case of Digital Cinema, the idea is that every single showing of movies in every cinema is unique. It won't stop the pirating directly (does a visible watermark do that?) but you can trace things back to the last legal owner very easily. The logical extension of this technology in the future would be that if you subscribe to a content provider and download/view something, your copy is unique and can be traced back to you. Some people might find this scary, but I think it's a good thing.


(Don't reply to this here - go to SBS thread)

Cheers

The ABC used the "ABCKIDS" green blob brandmark over the 4:30am movie this morning; (01/08/2005); for the first couple of minutes; before it switched to the standard one. Just as in DW the other week.

Sorry; HOW much money has the ABC spent on this stuff?

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but there's now a protest web site.

http://www.logofreeabc.com

Thanks for the FYI.

Heard on ABC radio yesterday of a site called "getup.org.au" designed to put pressure on the government on various issue, only I can't find it. Did anyone else hear about this yesterday afternoon? (702 afternoon). Did I get the site name wrong?

Cool, that deserves a bit of heavy promotion, so tell your friends, family, etc, etc.

Time to shot off an email to my local paper about it.

http://www.getup.org.au/ works for me. Maybe the site was down for a while.

thanks. yes, its working now.

The website's still under construction - I didn't want to mention it until it was properly up and running.

As I'm gonna be away in FNQ until the end of the month and unable to be active until I'm back, but hopefully Greg will have ironed out the kinks before too soon.

These links also work

www.logofreeabc.tv
www.logofreesbs.tv
www.logofreesbs.com

but as yet there's no sbs content up. I'm gonna send Greg the letter I sent to SBS a week ago, and maybe something will be derived from that. Obviously the graphics and other stuff need some tweaking after SBS's recent stupid effort...

Cheers

Good work, but be careful, ABC Legal will get at you for using the ABC Corporate logo on your site. I wonder what kind of corporate spin Lesna Thomas, the ABC's ever so famous spin doctor who declared George Negus was delighted his show was axed, and Peter Cundall was absolutley delighted and thriled that Gardening Australia was moving to Melbourne, will spit out with regards to this website?

yeah, thats what we need, someone to be taken to court for wanting the 'watermark' removed. Then the rest of the media can't ignore that story.

I say bring it on!!! But i very much doubt they will, the last thing the ABC wants is ANY publicity on the subject of watermarks, otherwise, god forbid, they just may have to answer questions.

Besides, claim it as your "10%" right of use for review and public comment

Man this could get very interesting, can't wait to see how it all plays out.

So it's goodbye to the clean Sydney only feeds.

It looks like the ABC have just wasted more of our money to install a bug machine on the Sydney feed that they use when they do Sydney only voice overs Last night's Dr Who had the watermark AND a Sydney only voice over.

I've been thinking about all this and I have a theory as to why this is all happening with the ABC and SBS. I think it may be primarily influenced by Government pressure on our broadcasting organizations to conform to the US driven crack down on Intellectual Property "violations". Software and Entertainment are probably becoming some of the most important exports for the US, so they're very keen to see the rest of the world conform to their regime of IP control and submit to US domination of this sector. The current Australian government is not known for their independent stand in US relations, and we have recently "assumed the position" over the US Free Trade agreement. This is probably yet another example of how we can show the US what good mates we are by being seen to be tough on piracy. You may have noticed that we are also being told that we can dob in a mate if he gives us a pirate software game, and that we may get software with no warranty (Yes, I know. Software warranty is a pretty nebulous concept, and pretty useless in practice. Mmmm...my Windows software has a severe security bug. Can I have my money back?)

Anyway, just some random thoughts.

There's some interesting reading here - http://www.ipjustice.org/IPJ_History_of_US_Piracy.pdf

This paper documents the history of US Government sanctioned copyright piracy. It appears that in the past the US was quite prepared to consider piracy beneficial when it suited them, and allowed their country to develop and catch up with Europe. Now that they are in a position of power, they do not see that the same rules should apply in other developing countries as they did when they were a developing nation themselves.

They've been doing that for a while, seven are doing you a favour by telling you a commercial break is coming up - change the channel! But i suppose you liked what nine used to do cover 10 seconds of the show with music before cutting footageout to make way for the break bumper.

Actually, no, 9 use to piss me off when they did that, especially on the Star Trek stuff and West Wing. Doesn't bother me now, since I no longer watch any of that on 9

Also, you don't need that extra logo thing to know to grab the remote. Every station, just before the ads are about to start, will fade out the normal watermark, so as soon as you see that, its time to channel flick.


eastsydneyboy, I have a feeling that you are partly right. You can see it all over the place right now, the US using free trade agreements to get the DMCA, etc into every country they can. Of course in the case of the ABC, its a bit funny, since half the content is UK anyway.

On a side note, I half heard something on the radio this morning, about a new coming, totally anonymous music swapping p2p software and the record industries heavy weights saying that they will stop anything that lets ppl rip artist off.
Needless to say the first thing I through of was, "Of course they will stop it, noone is allowed to rip artists off, thats the job of the record industry!!!!"

As Elmer Fudd once said:
Bee wherewee wherewee qwaet about dis

If you want to watch the main ABC programming after 6 pm (excluding the news and sport) WITHOUT the visual ABC haemorrhoid then you can using a HD set-top-box set to ABC HDTV. : How long this will last is anybody’s guess but sensible it is nevertheless.

Cheers and enjoy while it lasts.

Nobody worth their cents is watching LCN20, as the PQ is far better on LCN2 at the moment.

Yeah - its much like switching back to analogue in terms of image quality!

Not on my HD set-top box its not. Its exactly the same but without the watermark.

LCN20 should be replaced with a 24 hour Rage channel with AC3. It serves no useful purpose at all now.

Lately the WAFL coverage has been fantastic on ABC TV .
There were no stupid grey ABC symbols to be seen. just the score graphic.
Keep it like that ABC Perth ...

It works against piracy?

Over on "ABC1" the brandmark is in the BOTTOM right hand corner in the 4:3 area.
Over on "ABC2" the brandmark is in the TOP right hand corner in the 16:9 area.

(Oddly enough, ABC2 shows some 4:3 material which if you centre cut removes the brandmark).

I watch ABC2 from time to time for old episodes of Catalyst.
They now seem to just be repeating the previous thursday nights episodes.

ABC1-brandmark BOTTOM of screen.
ABC2-brandmark TOP of screen.

I did a little experiment.

Recorded ABC1 & ABC2 versions of the same program.
Convert to MOV files.
Place in editing system.
Lay one over the other as a matte, using just that part of the screen where "you know what" is.

Result. Rather good.
DELETED experiment.

hehe, but then again its just much easier to use x-logo and remove the mark from a single recording, still, nothing like having options.

Sadly, having a Mac, just at the moment I cannot run Virtual Dub, and x-logo, de-logo etc.
Emulator program allows me to run Windows 2000, but its a bit slow.
Waiting for the G6, G7, G8, quatum chip, whatever.
TS files being archived for later attention.
Yes, a logo removal program exists for the Mac, but its still in its early days .....
It's just gone up to OS10.4 which I don't have.
Such is life. I'm in no rush.


Observation: A few people are posting here, and on the SBS watermark thread, that they don't care about the "watermark", (I prefer the term "brandmark"), they say the "majority" of people don't care.

If correct, doesn't this make the "works against piracy" reason given by the ABC, (and all the other stations), meaningless? Which makes the brandmark meaningless and pointless.

I’ve just returned from FNQ and no access to internet and no TV and strangely enough I didn’t really miss it. But trying to keep dust away from camera gear really got to me about this whole issue. I couldn’t help but wonder about one of the so-called justifications that the ABC gave on the introduction of the watermark:
“Secondly, and importantly, the ABC believes it has a duty to copyright owners. Watermarking works against piracy (illegal off air recording) and for this reason it was adopted in most countries a number of years ago.”

Bollocks. As someone actually involved in the making of program content I would much rather have my own logo on stuff than the broadcaster, if you were going to be forced to have one to protect from illegal distribution. But the fact is that that argument is rubbish and having the equivalent of a permanent dust spot on every frame is abhorrent to someone who has tried to be vigilant about delivering the most pristine picture possible to an audience.

So, I propose sending the following questions to every program maker that provides content to the ABC:

1. Are you aware that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been adding their logo to your copyrighted content transmitted since February this year?
2. The ABC claims that it is, in part, employing this policy to fulfil its duty to you the program maker as an anti-piracy measure. Did the ABC ever contact you to ask for your opinion or permission to effectively degrade your content when it is only licenced to broadcast and should not have the right to alter your programs?
3. Are you aware that several TV stations in the UK have now understood that watermarking is counter-productive and have severely curtailed the practice? (Stations include the BBC, Channels 4 & 5) Have you ever considered why the major Hollywood studios (at most risk from piracy) have never employed visible watermarking and been using far more effective means that do not alter the images?
4. How do you feel about spending a significant amount of time to get a show ‘right’, when a station logo can and does interfere with graphics and visual details that happen to occur in the same area of the frame?
5. Are you aware that another of the arguments employed by the ABC is that watermarking is for identification purposes when digital television standards have been employed in Australia since 2000 that carry detailed information about the broadcaster, rendering watermarking redundant?
6. Are you aware that many people switch off from content for no other reason other than the fact that it includes visual content not part of the original show? (There are too many other better alternatives that they can turn to.)
7. Now that distribution to a global market via the internet and DVD is increasingly becoming a reality, have you considered bypassing broadcasters in different countries to sell your program content directly?

So far I only have a short list off the top of my head:

BBC
Channel 4
PBS
Pearson(Fremantle?)
Crackerjack
HBO

…but I need to compile a much more exhaustive list. Feel free to add to it. I suspect a similar tactic can be used for SBS.

When the the list is long enough, anyone who also wants to write to the distributors with similar points would be most welcome. The more the merrier - it just might cost a bit in stamps…

"Works against piracy"?

someone at the ABC needs to get their act together.
i've noticed a lot of 4:3 programs, entertainment programs, being shown on ABC2.
the ABC2 brandmark is in the 16:9 area.
so if those evil pirates record some of these programs its dead easy to trim the sides and remove the brandmark.

"works against piracy". yeah right.

Now this will be an interesting one, especially given what the BBC are planning, BBC Internet broadcasting.

While basically UK only at the moment, subscription based option for overseas must be something they are thinking of.

I can't think of any other sources, tho I would think that the BBC must be a pretty major one, second only to the ABC themselves and hence (given that they don't watermark main channels), the BBC would be the best one to send off to first.

In fact, I may even try a direct one myself with those questions to the current Doctor Who production office, RTD has been know to reply to a few things here and there.

Just sent to ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs, and submitted to the Foreign Correspondent guestbook...


Thank-you for broadcasting Foreign Correspondent in Melbourne on Tuesday 13 September without a watermark.

Foreign Correspondent is not just good stories. It often includes stunning photography as well. Viewed on a large widescreen TV, the picture is often demonstration quality.

But on a large widescreen TV the watermark is particularly intrusive. Hence it was a real pleasure to enjoy the program without a watermark.

Of course there is no need for a watermark -

Viewers know they are watching the ABC, and digital set top boxes tell you what channel you have tuned to whenever the channel is changed.

And of course commercial piracy is not a major problem with foreign correspondent (or any other ABC program).

And when viewed in the home, there is no difference between watching something live or a recording. So those who do not mind a watermark with live TV will have no problem recording a program for later viewing (or archiving). But those, like me, who find the watermark intrusive will be annoyed by the live transmission, and thus watch less TV.

Common practice is also not a good reason. In the UK BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, channels 4 and FIVE, SKY Movie channels 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, SKY Cinema 1 and 2 have either all removed (or have no) watermarks during their major program transmissions.

It would be great if the ABC had changed its mind about watemarks.

Unfortunately it was probably just a technical error, and the watermark will once again spoil and cheapen next weeks program.

You have a Mac? Then get Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express! People have been using that program within the industry, and for longer than VirtualDub has been around. Plus it's always had the tools you'll need to remove logos etcetera.


BTW, are people still complaining about the PQ of ABC "HDTV" ? Honestly, since they fixed it up (again), I have yet to find a frame where there was detail missing from the 576p version that wasn't in the 576i version.

If you disagree -- post up a sample here.

CK.

hello;
I have FCP 4.5, and have had FCP since version 1.
Can you refer me to a site that explains logo removal with FCP?
I asked around, no response, I experimented myself, (and I mean some extensive testing), without success.
There must be something obvious that I'm over looking.

Many Thanks.
(Private message sent as well).

Woo Hoo! Actually the news isn't that good, but I actually might have extracted a fresh response from the ABC.



I dunno - been trying to find the Charter obligation for the ABC to be "clearly identified on air" - as if that never happened before anyway.

and isn't "effective watermark" a strange phrase...?!?

Aunty, I don't care if it varies, but I do care that management think that the technical equivalent of a large dust spot is worthwhile, and that they are using taxpayers money to do it.

"effective" from who's point of view and for what means.

I can easily tell them what an effective watermark for me is, its one set at 100% transparent, at which point I don't give a toss where they place it on screen.

Interesting to know what they really do mean by effective.

Do they really think that the watermark is needed for people to find the ABC in a digital environment?

Do they really think that piracy is a problem, and that the watermark makes a difference?

Is there anything else that a watermark can be 'effective' for?

It is a worry that the people in the ABC who are making the decisions are so ignorant, and that they feel no need to properly justify what they do.

And there seems to be very little that we can do, which makes a mockery of all the talk about "our ABC".

Michael

(Southern Star) Endemol
Granada
Beyond
Movie Studios? (as movies are shown on the ABC or SBS occasionaly).

Hi there

Don't know if anyone has came across this phenomenon, so I'll post it anyway.

I recorded Doctor Who tonight in HD, using the TS setting on my card. As you all know, there's no watermark on Doctor Who at HD, but is there?

When I converted the file to an SD MPEG, there was an ABC watermark in the corner. It wasn't on the original HD TS file, nor was it on the broadcast itself.
When I play the TS file back through various programmes, it is fine. However, when I play it back through my Dvico Fusion card software, the watermark is there.

I've never had this before when using the other settings, but it's on the TS file. The only thing I can guess is that because TS is the highest of the settings available to me, it must pick up more in the hidden background of the images. It's almost as if the watermark is some form of macrovision?

The Dvico Fusion software is playing back the SD stream instead of the HD stream.

Same goes for when you tried to convert the file to an MPEG file.

You need to be able to select the stream you want prior to converting/playing back, otherwise it will just play back the first available stream.

Try using a program called HDTVtoMPEG, as that allows you to select the stream you want and convert to MPEG, or leave it as TS, but with just one video and one audio stream. And since there aren't any ads on ABC, you don't need any special cutting tools, since HDTVtoMPEG provides some basic functionality for editing. (Use your mousewheel)

So, does that mean when you record in TS, it is recording in both HD & SD (in other words, 2 recordings of the same programme, at the same time)? Haven't had this happen with the other settings.

So, does recording in TS give a better quality of picture, considering I would then convert it to SD?

Or is Mpeg or DVR-MS better?

When I converted the file, I first tried with Procoder, but it had problems reading the file. I then used HDTV2DVD, which succeeded, but found the watermark.

I'll give HDTVtoMPEG2 a go, as you suggested.

Just noticed, using HDTVtoMPEG2, that my TS recording also has ABC2?

It depends on whether you're recording TS Mux or TS Full...

TS Mux means just the channel you're tuned into.

TS Full means the channel you've tuned into, plus every other channel on the same frequency. So that means you'll be recording both SD and HD at the same time.

TS Mux will give you a smaller file size, since it's only one set of streams.

TS will be just the same as the other ones in terms of picture quality, as neither format alters the stream in any way. They just record whatever they receive.

Converting the 576p channels (eg. ABC HD) to SD would be a waste, not just in terms of picture quality loss involved but also a waste of time, since extra encoding needs to be done. If you record with just SD, you don't have to re-encode the video, ever, unless you plan on squeezing in extra video/content on a DVDR disc.

Also, most of the time, ABC's SD is better than their HD, however there are odd cases where the opposite is true (I've yet to make actual screenshots, but I have seen it happen, along with some other members here)

Any tips on the web on using HDTVtoMPEG2?

It seams to find 3 video streams, 2 from ABC, with watermark, & 1 from ABC2?

Also, I get no audio.

Any other programs that I could try?

I've never came across anything in the Dvico software that gives an option between TS Mux & TS Full?

I'm recording in HD to get rid of the dreaded watermark. I know ther is the x-logo software that does it for SD recordings, but I found it not only a pain to use, but it actually took up more conversion time, & requires a lot of HDD space.

I've also noticed that some of the Doctor Who episodes look better in HD, while others don't look as good as SD. However, as it's not a recent programme, using better equipment to film in, & as the tapes the ABC have are old ones from the vaults, the quality won't make much of a difference.

I'm seriously considering removing my Dvico card anyway, & getting an HD STB for recording in real time to my DVD recorder (as I used to do with my SD STB, prior to the watermark appearance). Doctor Who is the only programme I'm recording for keeps, & since it's in 4:3, as well as the need to reconvert video files on the PC (when recorded by Dvico), in order to fit to disc, the Dvico is not the thing for me really.

ahh.. i see.. well i'll check out the PQ of Doctor Who tomorrow and see which one is ultimately better...

I use a plugin in virtualdub to remove the watermark on Doctor Who during the encoding process to divx. It takes no more time (other then a couple of minutes to set-up) and uses no more drive space then any other divx encode from DTV.

I've not looked at the HD channel for a while now, not since it went to 576p. If it still has that blurry look, then that maybe why at times it "looks" better. Many recent shows have been pretty noisy (outdoor film shoots) while the in studio shots are much cleaner and sharper. So a bit of HD blurring could make the outside bits look "better" while making the studio shots look worse compared to SD. Given the extra hassle of taking the source down to 25fps from HD, I've just not bothered with recording the HD channel.

On a note, I'm partly looking forward to the end. 126 storys so far and some 50 DVD's, all sorted and catalogued and added to my Who database, its a time comsuming process

Any idea when it went to 576p, as I've only been doing HD recording for a few weeks (since Castrovalve, which would be about 6 weeks back)?

Most of the recent episodes look fairly good on HD (I usually go by the text in the opening titles). The only times I've compaired the transmissions to SD is with the stories I already have on DVD.

Maybe the quality also varies depending on the digital source? On my Dvico card the images look clean when viewed on a TV, whereas both my STB & Foxtel sources tend to look very grainy. At the same time, though, I also feel the Dvico card gives a slightly more washed out look even in SD, whereas the grainy images on the TV look sharper.

With my recordings, I'm doing them to DVD, so they are in MPEG2 format. This requires me to get the image into 4:3, & then sometimes having to shrink the files more (using DVD Rebuilder Pro), when the episodes may just be a bit too big to get on one disc.

I've tried using Tony's method, using virtualdub with the xlogo plugin, however for me to get it to MPEG2, it requires a few extra bits of work to be done (as well as more space), since it means converting to AVI, then back to MPEG2, and so on.

One alternative I've considered to an HD STB is a media centre player, like Buffalo, or the Pinnacle one, or the other one made by Dvico (can never remember its name?). That way, I can take my HD recordings from my PC &, using an external HDD (or other means), transfer to my DVD recorder & do everything in real time.

Anyway, that's all drifting off the subject. I did see something on here about how to get rid of watermarks in real time. Anyone tried it, & does it work?