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So.... as with every post-DEFCON era, i have started receiving messages from people who are asking about the "filler content" and if/when it will be torrented.
I am pleased to say that yes, like in years past I will be creating a torrent for people to grab everything that they may have seen projected on a wall at many of the DEFCON public areas, parties, etc. I'm still cleaning up and sorting some files, due to the fact that this undertaking is a lot larger than in the past... but i'm hoping that by the end of the week it will all be available.
Why is this year so much more of an endeavor? Well... as some people may know, there are two primary "archives" of content that exist separately at DEFCON. There was the old DEFCON Movie Channel which inserted stuff in-between films. This content archive was managed by Tierra and i took that and started cleaning it up, reorganizing it, and so forth just after DC12 i want to say.
There is also, however, the content that is played in the CTF room by Bob from Kenshoto. While there is much overlap between his content and the DCTV filler, it is (or was) a separate archive. Bob's material tended to be much higher-quality (almost all of it was VOB or MP4/MOV) and came from a wider range of sources.
Last year at DEFCON i acquired Bob's whole archive, too. It's been over a year that i've been sorting these files in my spare time, eliminating duplicates between the two archives, and merging them.
Because i'm a total freak about such things, there are very exacting standards that I follow with all the clips... and some things don't make the cut, sadly. However, much of Bob's archive (indeed, pretty much all that you've seen in the CTF room) is now part of my master archive. Both Bob's clips and Tierra's clips needed a lot of work in the past, and i apologize for how long this has taken. There are some standards that i follow when working on the material...
Sooooo.... how do we go about getting this out to all you eager beavers? Well, i'd like to try to make some sort of pre-seeding setup, where people who have the right assets can get the torrent a few days before it goes totally public. What are the right assets? Well...
I am pleased to say that yes, like in years past I will be creating a torrent for people to grab everything that they may have seen projected on a wall at many of the DEFCON public areas, parties, etc. I'm still cleaning up and sorting some files, due to the fact that this undertaking is a lot larger than in the past... but i'm hoping that by the end of the week it will all be available.
Why is this year so much more of an endeavor? Well... as some people may know, there are two primary "archives" of content that exist separately at DEFCON. There was the old DEFCON Movie Channel which inserted stuff in-between films. This content archive was managed by Tierra and i took that and started cleaning it up, reorganizing it, and so forth just after DC12 i want to say.
There is also, however, the content that is played in the CTF room by Bob from Kenshoto. While there is much overlap between his content and the DCTV filler, it is (or was) a separate archive. Bob's material tended to be much higher-quality (almost all of it was VOB or MP4/MOV) and came from a wider range of sources.
Last year at DEFCON i acquired Bob's whole archive, too. It's been over a year that i've been sorting these files in my spare time, eliminating duplicates between the two archives, and merging them.
Because i'm a total freak about such things, there are very exacting standards that I follow with all the clips... and some things don't make the cut, sadly. However, much of Bob's archive (indeed, pretty much all that you've seen in the CTF room) is now part of my master archive. Both Bob's clips and Tierra's clips needed a lot of work in the past, and i apologize for how long this has taken. There are some standards that i follow when working on the material...
1. quality - All clips must be as high-quality as is reasonable within sane file size limits. So many times there has been a music video with totally ass sound quality. 128 kbps bitrate audio is fine for a clip from the Home Shopping Club where a guy pokes himself with a katana sword... but not for Trent Reznor blasting out a heavy tune. I've re-done the audio on about half of the music videos using downloaded or ripped sources. all clips have their audio somewhat normalized (exceedingly loud or soft clips would get addressed, that is. others are all just in the ballpark) and whenever possible video will fade in from and out to black. also, anytime multiple "versions" of a clip exist i would try to go with the most rare or special or, indeed, explicit. this is particularly the case with music videos... if an uncensored version of a video is out there, that's the one that makes it to the filler. (which now contains the director's cuts of the Beastie Boys' Sabatoge, NIN's Sin and Closer, some Bloodhound Gang videos, and other odds and ends)
2. formats - All clips for my archive must be in open and non-proprietary format. Thus, yes... all of Bob's Apple videos and DVD VOB files are being re-encoded to XviD. This is done in concert with the above standard, that quality should not be sacrificed wherever possible... but i'm maintaining a list of which files i had to drop down so that when he gets the archive back, he can keep his super-high quality content for CTF projections.
3. non-commercialism - Clips that feature a company logo or URL too prominently get edited through a variety of means. Often this can be as simple as cutting out some or all of the credits of a promotional film (many graphic design shops make little clips as a way to say "come attend our school" and such) but other times blogs or video hosting sites will slap a logo or URL somewhere in the film itself. Heh, i tend to address this either with some minor frame clipping or by laying a super on top of part of the clip. some of the terrific moments of FAIL that i have in the archive now got that treatment... making them even funnier, i must say. something that particularly draws my ire are music video rips that get tagged at the end with some douchebag teenager's horrible photoshopped graffiti tag. these have been ruthlessly excoriated, and you get to make fun of me if i missed any.
naturally, the directory called "commercials" is somewhat immune from the no advertising rule... but they tend to be specifically funny or rare commercials (often from non-western sources) that merit attention as art or humor, as opposed to as ads.
4. watchability - since my archive has now grown to nearly 10 GB, it won't even fit on a DVD anymore. in an attempt to keep this from getting any more out of control, i've cut a few clips that just seemed totally worthless. i generally don't like to cut anything, but like... we've all seen the scene in Hackers where the kid red-boxes the payphone. A low-qual DVD rip that cuts in and out in a weird fashion didn't make the grade for me now.
2. formats - All clips for my archive must be in open and non-proprietary format. Thus, yes... all of Bob's Apple videos and DVD VOB files are being re-encoded to XviD. This is done in concert with the above standard, that quality should not be sacrificed wherever possible... but i'm maintaining a list of which files i had to drop down so that when he gets the archive back, he can keep his super-high quality content for CTF projections.
3. non-commercialism - Clips that feature a company logo or URL too prominently get edited through a variety of means. Often this can be as simple as cutting out some or all of the credits of a promotional film (many graphic design shops make little clips as a way to say "come attend our school" and such) but other times blogs or video hosting sites will slap a logo or URL somewhere in the film itself. Heh, i tend to address this either with some minor frame clipping or by laying a super on top of part of the clip. some of the terrific moments of FAIL that i have in the archive now got that treatment... making them even funnier, i must say. something that particularly draws my ire are music video rips that get tagged at the end with some douchebag teenager's horrible photoshopped graffiti tag. these have been ruthlessly excoriated, and you get to make fun of me if i missed any.
naturally, the directory called "commercials" is somewhat immune from the no advertising rule... but they tend to be specifically funny or rare commercials (often from non-western sources) that merit attention as art or humor, as opposed to as ads.
4. watchability - since my archive has now grown to nearly 10 GB, it won't even fit on a DVD anymore. in an attempt to keep this from getting any more out of control, i've cut a few clips that just seemed totally worthless. i generally don't like to cut anything, but like... we've all seen the scene in Hackers where the kid red-boxes the payphone. A low-qual DVD rip that cuts in and out in a weird fashion didn't make the grade for me now.
Sooooo.... how do we go about getting this out to all you eager beavers? Well, i'd like to try to make some sort of pre-seeding setup, where people who have the right assets can get the torrent a few days before it goes totally public. What are the right assets? Well...
* if you have a previous version of the archive (like as a swag DVD that i handed out at a previous DEFCON) and it's all still in the proper directory structure, and
* if you have a relatively fast connection (upstream and down), and
* if you can keep your seed machine online a whole, whole lot
... then i'd love to get a PM from you so we can get the full archive out to you as soon as i complete it.
* if you have a relatively fast connection (upstream and down), and
* if you can keep your seed machine online a whole, whole lot
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