DCMC 2005 Filler Torrent

[Tierra]

There were some last minute issues posting this before Defcon. Now that those issues are out of the way, here is the 2005 Defcon Movie Channel filler torrent for anyone that didn't manage to find me at Defcon for a DVD:

http://ibaku.net/filler/dcmc-filler-2005.torrent (3.5GB, 221 clips)

[Deviant Ollam]

absolutely kickass collection of clips in between films this year, man. some i had seen before but still had me holding my sides. others were new to me and had me nearly rolling on the floor at points. only one clip i can actually think of that people had a problem with... the black and white footage of a bombing mission from what looked like either an apache or an AC-130 specter over afghanistan. while it was one that i had seen before, it still kinda gets me in a negative way. i can easily see how people that have never seen genuine war footage like that could have been upset.

overall, tho... fucking wonderful stuff. can't wait to add it to my collection. (btw... i suppose you already know this but on occasion the script would repeat a clip twice in a row, often including some sort of metered bar graph image in overlay during the second run of the clip. and, also, "Enemy of the State" had a bad sound stream in its encode.) my technical comments shouldn't in any way be taken as an indication that i have a negative impression of the movie chan tho, man. seriously... amazing bloody work. great selection of material and wonderful delivery. thanks for all you did.

[ck3k]

neg9.org is currently helping out with some bandwidth, so grab your copy via the torrent now!

[eco]

For those that want to know, the repeating is caused--essentially--by WMVs sucking. The script autofits space between movies by randomly picking filler that will fit. It also attempts to restart something if mplayer dies unexpectedly (stops playing before the specified movie duration has elapsed). With the vast majority of filler clips being encoded by idiots this presents a problem. WMVs, for instance, always reports a FPS of 1000.0 (which is clearly wrong). WMVs also love to store the wrong duration in the header so the script monitoring playback sees that playback stopped well before it should have and restarts it (at would should be the correct place). With some filler items though, it would not skip far enough into the clip meaning you guys had to unbearably watch stuff again.

The script went almost untouched since DefCon 12 (I was too busy with work had didn't have the motivation to break back into it) so it was basically the same this year as it was the year before. I'm planning a complete rewrite this time though. I should be getting a lot of exciting stuff in this time around (the first time I wrote it was my first time using Python so I had that handicap going for me).

Tierra somehow ended up being media organizer this year and for the amount of work involved (I did it the year before and believe me, it is days worth of work) and the short time he ended up having after it was thrown in his lap, it's pretty impressive it came out as well as it did. He deserves almost all of the credit for the movie channel this year. I wish I could have gotten in and fixed the restart problem but sadly, didn't get to.

I think 23 and Enemy of the State were the only movies I've heard of with issues (I didn't hear any sound when I turned on the TV while 23 was on but I was blitzed at the time and maybe the remote control was outsmarting me).

Also, we couldn't actually get the box hooked up (the NOC wasn't ready for it until very late the first night) and some higher-up cut the power to the movie channel box intentionally one night and Tierra wasn't allowed in to turn it back on. That whole night without movies was out of our hands.

The gunship video wasn't actually planned to be in there to my knowledge. The gunship video is long, boring, and kind of disturbing. It got snuck in somehow. I didn't think the Apache video was going to be in there either but I guess I was wrong. Another video that I would have prefered not having was the "Ultimate Ownage Video" since not everyone has tolerance for that kind of stuff. I think I'll try and spread a little more influence over keeping any arguably disturbing filler clips out for next year.

With that said, were there any other problems not mentioned that anyone experianced? Debugging 79 hours of video isn't really the easiest task so if anyone noticed something that was just wrong or off please let me know.

[Deviant Ollam]

For those that want to know, the repeating is caused--essentially--by WMVs sucking.

yeah, i had a hunch that may have been part of it. i actually re-encoded a ton of the WMV vids that tierra had and included them on a DVD-R i sent him before the con... but i don't know if the originals ended up still in the list or not. if people submit shit-ass material again pre DC14 i'll be glad to re-encode them to a proper format.

The script went almost untouched since DefCon 12 ... I'm planning a complete rewrite this time though.

looking great, man. really kick ass work. by the way... what was that "bar meter" that occasionally showed up on the screen?

and some higher-up cut the power to the movie channel box intentionally one night and Tierra wasn't allowed in to turn it back on. That whole night without movies was out of our hands.

was that friday, maybe? i recalled being in the room for a minute or two that evening and being puzzled by the blank screen (we tended to just leave the movie channel on in the background) and guessed that someone had been watching a talk feed which ended. guess that was the blackout night. can you provide any more details on what happened and why?

The gunship video wasn't actually planned to be in there to my knowledge. The gunship video is long, boring, and kind of disturbing. It got snuck in somehow. I didn't think the Apache video was going to be in there either but I guess I was wrong.

ah well, we're all on the same level there... it'll just be out next year.

Another video that I would have prefered not having was the "Ultimate Ownage Video" since not everyone has tolerance for that kind of stuff.

heh, while i'll admit that it's a bit of a rough set of clips, i find that one kinda funny in most parts.

With that said, were there any other problems not mentioned that anyone experianced? Debugging 79 hours of video isn't really the easiest task so if anyone noticed something that was just wrong or off please let me know.

nope, i think those few little things were the only issues. thanks so much for running the whole big sucker. great work all around, guys!

[hackajar]

neg9.org is currently helping out with some bandwidth, so grab your copy via the torrent now!

dc702 seed turned on as well

[Siviak]

Siviakistan torrent is alive and kicking.

[skroo]

I think 23 and Enemy of the State were the only movies I've heard of with issues (I didn't hear any sound when I turned on the TV while 23 was on but I was blitzed at the time and maybe the remote control was outsmarting me).

Naw, I got the same thing with 23 and wasn't even boozed-up. Thank God for subtitles :)

On another note, I did rather enjoy the filler as well as the programming, but would like to make a suggestion for next year: shorter gaps between movies. Not sure if it's been like that before (this is the first year I've ever really had time to sit down and just watch it), but it did seem a bit widely-spaced.

[TheCotMan]

Naw, I got the same thing with 23 and wasn't even boozed-up. Thank God for subtitles :)

I don't know about the problems with the audio, but I am looking for feedback on the subtitles... problems? suggestions?
What did you think of the scene at the German computer convention? Smoke filled room, people hanging out and talking? tons of people sleeping in a room? Many people avoiding the media? That reminds me of early DefCon.

On another note, I did rather enjoy the filler as well as the programming, but would like to make a suggestion for next year: shorter gaps between movies. Not sure if it's been like that before (this is the first year I've ever really had time to sit down and just watch it), but it did seem a bit widely-spaced.

Heh-heh. :-) Last year people wanted to see more filler, and so they added greater gaps to allow for more filler to be shown.

Last year, I think they worked it for 2 hour slots between movies, and beyond 2 hours, movies starting on the next hour. This year, I think it was 3 hour blocks for movies and filler.

Goes to show they can't please all of the people all of the time.

Making filler available with a torrent is great. Thanks tierra, eco, hackajar/dc702 & Siviak and ck3k/neg9/[*] for making the torrent of filler available.

[Tierra]

i actually re-encoded a ton of the WMV vids that tierra had and included them on a DVD-R i sent him before the con... but i don't know if the originals ended up still in the list or not. if people submit shit-ass material again pre DC14 i'll be glad to re-encode them to a proper format.

I did in fact end up using your copy as opposed to any WMVs where I had two copies, but there were still a lot of clips where I only had WMV encoded versions. I most likely still missed a lot of clips, and I still don't doubt there's a couple dupes in the mix as filtering through all that filler turned out to be one hell of a job and I just ran out of time to do any more work on it at the last minute. With the issues we ran into this year, I'm planning on coding up a script to do the cleaning of the filler for us... remove dupes, re-encode where needed, etc.

looking great, man. really kick ass work. by the way... what was that "bar meter" that occasionally showed up on the screen?

You most likely saw that on filler, but that would happen when mplayer would die before the clip was supposed to end (see WMV issues, but it would also happen on a few other clips), eco's script would start mplayer with -ss skipping to where it should of left off leaving the progress bar up for a second. There's probably an option to turn off the OSD, we'll look into that for next year as well, but that's definately not a big issue.

was that friday, maybe? i recalled being in the room for a minute or two that evening and being puzzled by the blank screen (we tended to just leave the movie channel on in the background) and guessed that someone had been watching a talk feed which ended. guess that was the blackout night. can you provide any more details on what happened and why?

There were a couple times during Defcon that the box went down. The first being Friday night when it was shut off on purpose, I'm not going to mention any details. The second was Saturday night when the power went out. Normally the box would start back up and start right where it left off with no problems, but I was having problems the whole con getting the changed time to save to the hardware clock, and the hardware clock was ahead of the actual time by about 20 hours (we forgot to check the clock before taking the box down with us). So if you were watching Fear and Lothing in LV Saturday night, and watched it die once, and then go into filler, that was when I was in there resetting the clock and restarting the script to get it back on schedule (Fear and Lothing wasn't scheduled until Sunday afternoon). There was a third time the box went down Saturday night into Sunday morning if I remember right (I was fairly blitzed most of the con myself, so don't take these dates/times as exact), that was caused by a couple of the shorts inbetween movies (shorts being in the coming up screens was new this year btw) that only showed themselves with the last couple shorts we had in the lineup. I ended up taking out the rest of the shorts in the lineup so the problem didn't exibit itself the rest of the con, and it didn't.

On another note, I did rather enjoy the filler as well as the programming, but would like to make a suggestion for next year: shorter gaps between movies. Not sure if it's been like that before (this is the first year I've ever really had time to sit down and just watch it), but it did seem a bit widely-spaced.

Cot nailed most of that down... The movie count for this year was 27. Last year it was closer to 40. We had a lot more feedback on filler clips since people liked the fact that they could come back to their room in between talks or events and watch a few short funny clips while taking a break, then head back out. So we did cut back on movies this year, but it's for the best anyway since there's not a whole ton of movies people want to come to Defcon to watch anyway that they can't find elsewhere and watch another time.

Last year, I think they worked it for 2 hour slots between movies, and beyond 2 hours, movies starting on the next hour. This year, I think it was 3 hour blocks for movies and filler.

Last year we found a time to start playing movies, and when one movie would end, we would slot the next movie at the next 30 minute block that was open leaving less than 30 minutes for filler inbetween movies. The schedule this year makes our layout a lot more obvious... every 3 hours. That gave us a lot more room to fit in longer filler clips (all the clips you may of saw in the coming up screens with the label "Short:", you won't find them in the torrent). I'm still looking for feedback on what people thought about the shorts. We had a few shorts that came close to an hour long... a lot of reports on previous Defcons, a short on music pirates, a couple other hacker clips, some extremely old PSA/training clips, some Dave Chappelle... a lot of these wouldn't of been possible to play without the amount of time we had between movies.


We wanted to look into using mplayer's -fixed-vo option this year to avoid any static or pause inbetween filler clips completely, but ran out of time to do so, look for it next year. This also means we'll be taking out the failsafe code if mplayer dies while playing filler (shouldn't of needed it for filler anyway), so technically, WMVs won't be an issue next year like they were this year, but the only times I've seen mplayer die is while playing WMVs anyway, so it would just be better to not have to deal with them at all next year anyway.

Also, while I wanted to turn up the volume a little more for movies (it was set for a little too quiet), it would get too loud on filler clips... with the task of re-encoding all the filler next year, this shouldn't be an issue next year, and we'll also be adding some normalizing through filler just for some added ajustment so you won't be reaching for the remote every time it changes to a new filler clip.

I had boosted up the subtitle fonts pretty high before defcon expecting the AP's system to make them kind of hard to read, but they turned out a lot better than expected, so they won't be nearly as big next year and cut off on the sides as I noticed it did with a few of the longer ones. I had forgot to copy over the -subpos option from my test lineup to the official one, so if you saw the subs on Run Lola Run being cut off on the bottom, that got fixed for the other two movies before they ran, and won't be a problem in the future either.

I still haven't checked into why the audio didn't play on 23 (no it wasn't just that you were blitzed eco, I saw it as well), but at least the subtitles from Cot had hearing impaired subs as well =). We'll get that on the lineup again next year not just because the audio didn't play, but also since a lot of people still missed it, and it's a good, very rare movie (I got props from people saying it's hard to get your hands on it in Germany).

So given what happened this year on DCMC, we look forward to some major improvements next year.

[skroo]

I don't know about the problems with the audio, but I am looking for feedback on the subtitles... problems? suggestions?

They worked great. The only real thing I could say was that I caught a couple of typos, but that's pretty small stuff.

What did you think of the scene at the German computer convention? Smoke filled room, people hanging out and talking? tons of people sleeping in a room? Many people avoiding the media? That reminds me of early DefCon.

Yep to all of the above :)

Cot nailed most of that down... The movie count for this year was 27. Last year it was closer to 40. We had a lot more feedback on filler clips since people liked the fact that they could come back to their room in between talks or events and watch a few short funny clips while taking a break, then head back out. So we did cut back on movies this year, but it's for the best anyway since there's not a whole ton of movies people want to come to Defcon to watch anyway that they can't find elsewhere and watch another time.

Good point, and to answer both you and cotman at once: I probably only really noticed because I spent an inordinate amount of time in my room this year. If I'd been up and about as usual chances are I wouldn't even have known.

[Deviant Ollam]

There were a couple times during Defcon that the box went down. The first being Friday night when it was shut off on purpose, I'm not going to mention any details.

that's alright. i can imagine a couple of situations that would require some discression on your part and i don't mind coming up with wild, whacky rumors that no one will substantiate. if i had to make my best guess, it would be something that someone found objectionable (most likely a bit of filler material) which resulted in a complaint to the hotel staff or DC staff. the box was snuffed and the offending content removed prior to it's reawakening. bloody hell, do i ever hate heavy-handed censorship. it's one thing if a call comes down, someone gets someone else to skip ahead one clip then delete things from an SSH session... that doesn't disrupt anyone, but when a whole feed is blanket killed with the box being zapped (and i'd guess it wasn't a nice shutdown -now affair but rather an effort involving a power cord) then someone got a little too worked up, imho. but like i say, this is all just hypothetical... i am likely way off in my suppositions.

[converge]

Odd.. seems like I'm lucky to hit 20kBps .. am I doing something wrong? My upload is not limited, my connection is reliably ~1.7mBps up/down. Trying to get this seeded to add to the band pool...

[TheCotMan]

Odd.. seems like I'm lucky to hit 20kBps .. am I doing something wrong? My upload is not limited, my connection is reliably ~1.7mBps up/down. Trying to get this seeded to add to the band pool...

Are you "connectable" ?

If you are behind a filter,firewall,NAT/Masquerading system and do not have exposed port forwarding back to your torrent port, then peers may know about you, but can't connect to you to upload what they have and sync with you.


Since many of us are paranoid, I suspect there is a bottleneck in the seeders that are "connectable" and an excess of users that are "not connectable."

Try becoming "connectable" and see if other "not connectable" people can find you to upload to you as well.

Here is what I was told today:
seeds: 10 seen recently, plus 1.998 distributed copies |
peers: 18 seen now, 32.1% done at 341.2 kB/s

Look at your peer list. If there are only a few, then it seems likely that your other "would-be" peers can't get to you.

[converge]

hmm... I will research the port to forward on my firewall then, I suppose. That could explain much. Are there known security issues with this that I should be aware of?