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Coded Anti-Piracy, or CAP, is an anti-piracy technology by way of marking with a forensic identifier used to circumvent the illegal duplication of motion pictures, whether it be illegal duplication of motion picture prints, or movies illegally duplicated by a moviegoer recording a movie being projected on-screen with a camcorder.
CAP code
CAP comes in two forms: either a code printed on the sprocket edge of a motion picture print, or a multi-dot pattern that is printed in a couple of frames in various segments of a film print of a theatrically exhibited motion picture. This codes and patterns are referred to as a CAP code.
The code identifies the particular theater that is playing the print of a movie and/or distributor of the print. It's added to the print before it is sent to a theater. When dots are used, they're arranged in a unique pattern as identification.
Kodak's CAP
The original style of CAP code, developed in 1982 by Eastman Kodak along with the Motion Picture Association of America, is a series of numbers printed edgewise among the sprocket holes, and is printed every 100 frames.The original incarnation of CAP developed by Kodak is a technology for watermarking film prints to trace copies of a print, whether legitimate or pirated, to its original.
Deluxe's CAP
A newer, and more common variation, has been developed by Deluxe Laboratories, and is placed directly in frames of a film print. It was developed to thwart film piracy from theatergoers with camcorders, or prints that have been illicitly telecined to videotape or DVD.
Deluxe's version has been given the pejorative name of "crap code" by filmgoers, due to its quite intrusive nature when viewing. These dots are usually placed on bright areas of a film frame, so they can be more easily identified, and are a reddish-brown color. They are not to be confused with cue marks, aka "cigarette burns", which is either a black or white circle (or ring) in usually the upper right-hand corner of the frame. A cue mark is used to cue the projectionist that a particular reel of a movie is ending, as most movies come to theaters on several reels of film.
External links
"Coded Anti-Piracy"