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Author Topic: Watermarking Masters  (Read 1408 times)

Ben F

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Watermarking Masters
« on: August 21, 2005, 10:49:16 PM »

I've recently had a few experiences with overseas clients where our sealed CD-Masters are sent to the client, and then the client has copied or ftped the master to duplicating houses and subsequent problems have arisen with the manufactured disks. The client then tries to challenge responsibility.

I was wondering if there was a way to "water mark" masters, so if they were copied, the water mark would not be transferred to the copy. Obviously without degrading the audio in any way.



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Ronny

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2005, 10:58:20 PM »

Ben F wrote on Sun, 21 August 2005 22:49

I've recently had a few experiences with overseas clients where our sealed CD-Masters are sent to the client, and then the client has copied or ftped the master to duplicating houses and subsequent problems have arisen with the manufactured disks. The client then tries to challenge responsibility.

I was wondering if there was a way to "water mark" masters, so if they were copied, the water mark would not be transferred to the copy. Obviously without degrading the audio in any way.







Best way is to just have them sign off each project. Only a crook would pull crap like that on you, obviously they listened to the master, didn't have any problems with it, than made the copy to go to rep. They didn't contact you and complain before the cd's were pressed, so I'd say that you have a pretty good leg to stand on.
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TotalSonic

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2005, 11:05:12 PM »

Ben -
I don't know the answer to your question - but my first thought is why bother?  The fact is that you are delivering a physical product and that this is the one thing that you are liable for.  Everything else is subject to the multitude of variables that can be encountered in the manufacturing process.  

The manufacturer needs to be the one to advise your client if the master is not up to spec prior to making the replicated product.  Otherwise they should stand by their product as a reasonable duplicate of the original physical master.  

Now, if the client wants to go ahead and participate in some "home dentistry" by ftp-ing the original master's data in an unsupervised manner and proceeds with replication without getting a reference disc first - then I can't see how either you or the manufacturer can be held liable if the data wasn't necessarily sent intact.  

My advice: tell your client that they need to go to reputeable replicators that will do glass mastering directly off of the CD-R master, and that warrant their products against defects.  If he is doing a short run of CD-R's duplicated from the master he should go to a place that will provide a duplicated test reference disc for his approval first.  And if they care not to heed your advice - then they should accept that their risk of getting defective product will be greatly heightened.  

There IS a reason why a master is called a "master"!

Anyway - I'm interested in hearing from others what watermarking technologies are available that don't cost exorbiant amounts to license.  I'm not sure if there are any that actually work out there already though.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Ben F

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #3 on: August 21, 2005, 11:12:45 PM »

Thanks, good advice. This has only recently become a problem, and difficult to police because some manufacturers are saying to clients it's "ok" to ftp the audio, which is ridiculous, as I said this is most asian manufactures.

We only deliver sealed masters.
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Ronny

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2005, 02:16:07 AM »

Ben F wrote on Sun, 21 August 2005 23:12

Thanks, good advice. This has only recently become a problem, and difficult to police because some manufacturers are saying to clients it's "ok" to ftp the audio, which is ridiculous, as I said this is most asian manufactures.

We only deliver sealed masters.


I've FTP'd hundreds of songs receiving and sending and never had any problems with data corruption. I've had them cut off during the transfer many times, resumed from where it stopped but once it says transfer complete, all data has been intact. I'll bet the plant screwed up and are blaming the client and he is blaming you.
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bblackwood

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2005, 06:04:51 AM »

Ronny wrote on Mon, 22 August 2005 01:16

I've FTP'd hundreds of songs receiving and sending and never had any problems with data corruption. I've had them cut off during the transfer many times, resumed from where it stopped but once it says transfer complete, all data has been intact. I'll bet the plant screwed up and are blaming the client and he is blaming you.

I'd say it's more likely a problem occurring during initial extraction from the master...
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Thomas W. Bethel

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2005, 06:20:18 AM »

We have run into problems with masters leaving here and then someone doing additional processing to them after they leave our facility and then trying to blame us for the problem.

The most famous example for us was when a client decided that he did not like the song order and instead of contacting us and having it redone gave it to his son who put it on a computer and changed the song order only he burned the CD with TAO instead of DAO. So the "master" gets to the replication facility and they say they will have to charge the client $150.00 to redo the problem disk so the client calls me and starts taking my head off for sending out a NON STANDARD master. When I contacted the replication facility to find out what happened I find that they got a TAO disk on some crappy house brand CD. (in all the years we have been in business I have never burned a TAO disk and I only use Taiyo Yuden disks for masters) I called back the client and told him what I found. He suddenly remembers that his son had done the change in song order and reburned the CD. CASE CLOSED.

The other problem recently was that someone decided that they, after listening to a friend,  did not like the levels on the master. Instead of calling us they gave it to this "friend" who redid the entire CD and squashed the living he!! out of it leaving no dynamic range. The client sends off the master done by his friend, gets back 1000 CDs that sound like crap and plays his listening copy against the new master and does not like it. So he calls me and starts to complain about the mastering. I invite him over and we listen to the CD master that I have in the computer, we listen to his listening CD (both identical) and then to the replicated CDs. Well it was a very ear opening experience. While listening I casually ask the client what was done to the master CD after it left here and he told me about his friend "bumping up the levels a bit" before the CD was replicated. CASE CLOSED.

You cannot be held accountable for problems AFTER someone leaves your mastering operation. We have this stated in our signoff sheet and in our brochures. If people want to screw things up after you have worked hard on the project then becomes their problem and not yours.

MTCW
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Ronny

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2005, 12:03:48 PM »

bblackwood wrote on Mon, 22 August 2005 06:04

Ronny wrote on Mon, 22 August 2005 01:16

I've FTP'd hundreds of songs receiving and sending and never had any problems with data corruption. I've had them cut off during the transfer many times, resumed from where it stopped but once it says transfer complete, all data has been intact. I'll bet the plant screwed up and are blaming the client and he is blaming you.

I'd say it's more likely a problem occurring during initial extraction from the master...



I agree it's much more likely that mistakes would happen with the client if he was dealing with a reputable plant, however for that to happen, the client would have to have not listened to the copy that he sent to the plant. How many people are going to spend weeks or months tracking and mixing a cd's worth of songs, spend a thou or so for mastering, DAE the tunes himself and not listen to the newly created copy that he's going to send to the plant? It's possible of course that he didn't listen, but much more common for the client to listen. Had that been done and a mistake found at that time he would have likely notified Ben, or if he made a mistake on the DAE, it would show up on the new cd after listening. He also said Asian plant, where quality control may be spotty at best and the only people in the chain that don't typically audible check the cd to be pressed from, are the plants. It's a hard call for sure, but not easy for me to rule out the quality of an Asian plant.


Bottom line you need to get the sign off, or at least an e-mail that has the clients approval.  
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Bob Boyd

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2005, 09:44:02 AM »

A few years ago I was talking to a certain person at a certain record label who had just received my master discs.  I wanted to make sure she submitted one of the masters and not one of the reference discs.  In this particular shipment, I had done low speed masters but only had time to high speed burn some refs for their office in Nashville.

She then went on to explain that it she regularly took masters, put them in her PC at the office, copied them, and would submit the copy!  Her reasoning was so that they could keep the master and the one submitted would have their record label's logo on it.  Evidentally she'd been doing that for years.

I thought I was going to lose my mind.  After a long explaination to her I followed it up with a phone call to the artist.  They in turn called the president and we didn't have a problem anymore.
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Bob Boyd
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Jerry Tubb

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Re: Watermarking Masters
« Reply #9 on: August 23, 2005, 12:01:01 PM »

Bob Boyd wrote on Tue, 23 August 2005 08:44

She then went on to explain that it she regularly took masters, put them in her PC at the office, copied them, and would submit the copy!  Her reasoning was so that they could keep the master and the one submitted would have their record label's logo on it.  Evidentally she'd been doing that for years.


Hey Bob

we've had very similar incidents happen a few times over the years, sometimes with disastrous results for the client. like one who copied our master onto his pc to rearrange the order, burned a new master (track-at-once), got the discs back with a audible spike on every tracks start/stop. Another one, indie label guy loaded the master onto his pc, was using some cheap software to make it louder & brighter than any other cut on CD-X. Since then we've gotten pretty aggressive about letting the client know not to screw with the master disc.
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