When Is A Master A Master

One of the interesting things that came out of the Lisa Ann Jules Jordan story is how the use of the term “master” has changed in a relatively very short period of time.

If you are old school like me and date back to before films were shot on digital cameras or rapes then you know that the camera masters were the absolute MOST valuable copy of the video.   The reason is because in those days, when everything was analog you lost quality with every copy generation, so typically you made copies of your camera masters…those were called second generation copies, you then used those to edit, creating the edit masters, which were third generation copies, from those you made your duplication masters which were fourth  generation copies and from those you made the product for the cutomer typically those would be fifth or sixth generation masters….and remember ever generation loses sme quality from the generation before it, so by the eith generation the quality was usually bad enough that it was starting to be unwatchable.

As you might understand those camera masters  being the original first generation video were lik gold, you protected those at all costs.

Digital video changed that, when you make a digital copy of a digital master there is no generation loss  the copy is in every way identical to the source.  These days as is the case with Lisa Ann’s “masters” the term is used a bit differently because her masters are actually digital files the duplication master is in every way exactly as good quality as the camera master.

When the video is compressed to fit on DVD there is some quality loss in the compression but a copy of a copy of a caopy of a copy of the DVD you bought in a store looks exactly like the DVD you bought in the store because as long as it is a copy and not recompressed it is identical in every way.

So you hear a lot of old schoolers saying that we would never allow the masters out of our hands…and that is true…but a copy of a digital master is identical in quality to the master

These days we typically create an edit master from digital copies of our original masters that edit master contains all the edits, effects, titling etc and is wha is sent to the duplicators for mass creation of the product (DVD, BluRay etc)

These are still called masters but you send one to your distributor who sends it to the duplicator to do your duplication, it is this master that Lisa Ann wants returned…not the camera masters, she has those.

But to understand think of it this way  if I am distributing your product for you and I have edit masters or duplication masters I have the ability to do nefarious things with those masters so if I am no longer distributing your product you would not want me to have those masters  because I could use them to do evil things to you, like create compilations and duplicate your product and sell it for 1 dollar a DVD.  so it would be understandable that you would want any and all copies of your product returned.

I am not saying Jules Jordan would or would not do evil shit, but to ask for it all back is common business practice, as is returning it.  Just remember that the term master has a very different meaning these days than it did when each copy of a copy was lower in quality than the copy before it.  All of my analog masters are and always will be in my possession even though they have all been converted to digital these days…but back before digital that camera master was the best the video would ever look so they were much more tightly guarded.

 

120250cookie-checkWhen Is A Master A Master

When Is A Master A Master

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3 Responses

  1. It’s just like when people go on about piracy today being no different from the VCR or cassette tapes… mind numb fucks who can’t understand the difference between the degraded copy of a copy of a copy and a pure perfect digital reproduction of something.

    Digital changes everything, and generally not for the good.

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