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foley Abuse of stock sound effects hurting a project's identity(?)

So it could be an episode of Supernatural or Charmed on TV or a big budget movie, and all of these shows keep recycling the same sound effects. I get using certain sounds such as audio sweeteners and thuds and such things for fight scenes and sound layering. Those tend to take a reasonable amount of knowledge and work to create.

What i'm referring to are the simple effects. Whether it be a pantry door, an ice cream truck door or house door latch, it's always the same basic 'squeaky hinge #7' stock sound effect. This sound recording must be at least 30+ years old by now lol. And when you notice these stock effects you'll never be able to not notice them ever again. I find it very strange that a production company will pay millions of dollars to produce an episode or movie and then not take the time to record a new sound(s). I know i'm ranting here, but it makes the production value not feel as solid, hurting a film's otherwise unique identity.
 
Yep. The Wilhelm scream is probably the most prolific. It had become somewhat of an inside joke in the industry, but now it’s well out in the open and even more frequently-used than it used to be.

There are so few good SFX libraries out there that are sold for broadcast/screening/streaming license. The classic is the old BBC sound library. Killer Tracks also have an SFX library that pops up everywhere (notable entry: female gasp). Thing is, especially for episodic TV, turnarounds are tight and there’s often not a whole lot of time (or budget) to deal with extensive Foley work. SFX libraries make faster, cheaper work of sound design… for better or for worse.
 
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It's becoming a problem, in a subtle way over a long period.

Specifically fringe sounds get reused a lot more, because of their rarity.

A really big wave crashing against the side of a boat can be hard to get a clean recording of, and it's not usually cheap to pull off, so not many of those effects make it to lower cost SFX libraries. Now you'll hear 100 shows with that same wave crash, because there were only 7 total on the RF market, and only 3 of them were really good.

Music is less of a problem, but I was shocked yesterday when camblamo's trailer came out, and featured the same licensed music track as the opening of my current film.

It's all about probabilities and the sort, an area of math I'm really familliar with. And while I can't explain it all here, I'd say that you would be shocked at how fast 100,000 options dwindles down as you apply more and more constraints.

100,000 songs

I need a song that's

Orchestral
27k choices

also Creepy
2k choices

and no more than 3 minutes
432 choices

and could it have a creshendo in there somewhere to accentuate my title card

11 choices

and good sound quality?

5 choices
 
It's all about the budget. Yes, there are limited choices for some type of sound effects, but, especially on serial shows, there is limited time and limited budget. So, many sound folks default to the quality sounds they can find quickly, even though they would rather do the really fun part of sound design which is creating new sounds.
 
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Here's what I think is happening, which leads to another issue. Sound effects libraries, and even VFX element libraries are commonly shared. For better or for worse, that what happens on a show. I've seen it. Everyone's working together and adds to the asset pool for a project. At the end of the project, everyone copies the updated asset pool before moving on to the next project. This is obviously a breach of the license, but until recently, there was no way to enforce it and it does happen all the time. With all these assets having been bounced around, nobody knows who the original purchaser of said assets is. While all this is wrong, it happens on large shows and small shows, which could explain why they all use same Video Copilot blood hit, or a certain sound effect. Another problem from this occurs when the show is publicly posted on a site like YouTube. If a particular sound effect is flagged by Content ID, and if you can't prove you have a license, then YouTube gives ALL ad revenue to the license holder of the sound effect.

Think about that.

Here's a personal example: I was young and starting out. Around 2004, my local library had a sound effects CD that I checked out. I copied the sounds and the enclosed license to my computer and not knowing better, ended up using some of the sounds in my first feature film which I shot in 2007.

Years later, (2019 or so), I uploaded the film to YouTube as an Unlisted link, no ads or anything. I shared it on these boards as a laughable example of a first feature. YouTube says I have a copyright claim for the sound of birds in the background of one scene. Due to that, YouTube enabled monetization, placing ads on my unlisted film and claimed ALL of the revenue for the license holder of the sound effect that was used for maybe a total of 15 seconds. This is ridiculous.

While my example isn't anything crazy due to it being an unlisted film with less than 100 views, it illustrates a point.

I've also had this issue with short films where I make the music myself using loops in something Mixcraft Studio. I get loops flagged all the time in the Content ID system and I have to write in, protest, explain I have a license yada yada yada. But while I'm protesting, guess what? Some other person is getting all of MY royalties and I never get them back after it's settled.

"Sound is 50% of the movie". Okay, then give them 50% of the money, not all of it. It's nuts.

Sorry to have launched into this, I'm just surprised we don't hear more of this kind of thing regarding studio shows/films given I know for a fact that stuff is shared. They must either have a really good legal team or they are immune from it.
 
I'm not sure why your video would be flagged for bird sounds when the bird sounds are intended for use in film. In other words, how did they know you didn't buy it, or have your film edited at an edit house that had licensed it? What you are saying means people who licensed it would be flagged.
 
I'm not sure why your video would be flagged for bird sounds when the bird sounds are intended for use in film. In other words, how did they know you didn't buy it, or have your film edited at an edit house that had licensed it? What you are saying means people who licensed it would be flagged.
That's the part I don't get. Unless somehow the creators of the sound got themselves into the Content ID system, so any use of the sounds had to be proved. It's the same thing with my loops. I paid for Mixcraft. I have a license to use the included loops. But a loop that is used in a higher profile project or song, somehow they get into the Content ID thing and I get flagged and have to prove innocent.

My bird sounds might of had the same thing. For all I know, they got used in a higher profile project, and then as far as Content ID knows, that project is the owner of the sounds. So now I'm the guilty party that has to prove otherwise.
 
Here's a good one, when you see people uploading popular songs and not getting flagged, often they are changing the tempo of the song. So if you like to listen to music on YT and it's uploaded by a random user, there's a chance it's slower or faster than the original (or wrong pitch). So if you really care about the integrity of a song, listen to the official channels.
 
Here's what I think is happening, which leads to another issue. Sound effects libraries, and even VFX element libraries are commonly shared. For better or for worse, that what happens on a show. I've seen it. Everyone's working together and adds to the asset pool for a project. At the end of the project, everyone copies the updated asset pool before moving on to the next project. This is obviously a breach of the license, but until recently, there was no way to enforce it and it does happen all the time. With all these assets having been bounced around, nobody knows who the original purchaser of said assets is. While all this is wrong, it happens on large shows and small shows, which could explain why they all use same Video Copilot blood hit, or a certain sound effect. Another problem from this occurs when the show is publicly posted on a site like YouTube. If a particular sound effect is flagged by Content ID, and if you can't prove you have a license, then YouTube gives ALL ad revenue to the license holder of the sound effect.

Think about that.

Here's a personal example: I was young and starting out. Around 2004, my local library had a sound effects CD that I checked out. I copied the sounds and the enclosed license to my computer and not knowing better, ended up using some of the sounds in my first feature film which I shot in 2007.

Years later, (2019 or so), I uploaded the film to YouTube as an Unlisted link, no ads or anything. I shared it on these boards as a laughable example of a first feature. YouTube says I have a copyright claim for the sound of birds in the background of one scene. Due to that, YouTube enabled monetization, placing ads on my unlisted film and claimed ALL of the revenue for the license holder of the sound effect that was used for maybe a total of 15 seconds. This is ridiculous.

While my example isn't anything crazy due to it being an unlisted film with less than 100 views, it illustrates a point.

I've also had this issue with short films where I make the music myself using loops in something Mixcraft Studio. I get loops flagged all the time in the Content ID system and I have to write in, protest, explain I have a license yada yada yada. But while I'm protesting, guess what? Some other person is getting all of MY royalties and I never get them back after it's settled.

"Sound is 50% of the movie". Okay, then give them 50% of the money, not all of it. It's nuts.

Sorry to have launched into this, I'm just surprised we don't hear more of this kind of thing regarding studio shows/films given I know for a fact that stuff is shared. They must either have a really good legal team or they are immune from it.
Couple of things here.

Most licenses do include provisions for sharing within a studio, though some do include a limit of "seats" or simultaneous users. This is common practice, since most studios like my own buy assets for a project, rather than for a person. As far as everybody copy pasting digital assets, there has been a shift in how it's enforced that makes it easier for creators and harder for pirates. So in the case of SP for example, all of the sound assets are licensed directly to the channels where they are intended for use, meaning that if someone steals a sample and tries to reuse it elsewhere, it gets auto flagged. Older, offline libraries do have issues, and I expect it's becoming an outdated format for many of the reasons you listed.

Visual stuff is harder for them to track, but you would have to parade your stolen goods in front of literally 3 million people before you could get a check for 5 grand max, so it wouldn't really be a smart decision to do that.

Indietalk is right, and tons of people make modifications of existing assets, like speeding up tempos and the like, but it's pretty transparent, and wouldn't be effective at hiding a theft on any scale. You can see what I'm talking about in the video Fetus posted, where the guy can identify a sped up version instantly. The AI's will catch up to this soon, so not a long term problem.

There are some issues with all this, for example, legitimate synth patches get used at default tempos, not theft, fully acceptable. Then 3 people try to copywrite that patch just middle c at 120 or similar. It happens. So when you buy a Roland phantom or something, you are buying those patches, for any use, and can end up getting flagged just because someone used the same keyboard first.

A complicating factor is music patent trolls, where several companies have built businesses around "midi match" meaning that they can start filing IP rights for any chord progression or melody they claim to own. It wouldn't be a problem, except that youtube enters what's basically a default judgement in favor of whatever company has the most money. So you write a loop on your keyboard at home, and it overlaps with one of the subsections of one of the 3 billion songs URICA has digitally filed, and they incorrectly file a notice on autopilot. It's your own original work and you can prove it, but your money has already been sent to a Russian billionaire who never played and instrument, and it's your responsibility to take a jet to Russia and iron it out in court over a 6 month period, and then you can have the rights to your 4 second drumloop back, once you defeat the team of lawyers with deep pockets from stealing from a million people a day on autopilot. It's the way that the law enters a default judgement for any rich corporation that could afford millions in legal paperwork, and then youtube puts the burden of defending themselves on penniless creators. I had a piano piece I wrote seized by some company out of Germany, because a few notes overlapped with a Serbian composer who died in the 1800s. It wasn't stolen, or copied, or anything, but to get my 3c in revenue back, I'd have needed to spend tens of thousands of dollars fighting a legal complaint issued by a privately owned robot. So for the billionth time in a row, the system is completely rigged to just hand money to whoever already has it.

I agree with you completely about companies pulling revenue over samples. Let's say I had 5 people working on a cell, and then we publish. 10 hours on mixing, 20 hours on cinematography, 30 hours on level design, etc. Then we accidentally use one of these copied packs like in Fetus's video. Instant legal judgement (until proven otherwise) taking 100% of our revenue for all the work in the video, because of that 1 second section where we used "fork clink on dinnerware no 3". This is not common sense, this is more thieving by corporate lawyers, who wrote their own rulebooks about what was fair, and invited anyone with 100 million dollars to spare to appeal their unfair decision. The catch is, it's a bit different to hire your own army of lawyers, when their army of lawyers is seizing all your profits every time you make 10 bucks.

It gets worse. As of last year, Youtube's legal staff rewrote the rules yet again. Now you don't actually have to do anything wrong at all. They "Decided" that if someone was too poor to defend themselves, that all revenue from all youtube channels that didn't generate thousands of hours of ad revenue, get sent directly to google, arguably the richest people in the world. Every cent from Save Point, every hour of work done by every person for 2 years, has been automatically sent to a person who never worked a single second, invested any money into, or even knew about the project, and that goes for literally tens of millions of other channels. Let me stress that we are in 100% compliance, and all our profits are seized and redistributed to the wealthy anyway. In case anyone else wondered why ads are all over your channel that doesn't "meet eligibility standards for monetization" this is why. Their lawyers wrote in a clause saying that you do the work and they get the paycheck.

Anyway the whole thing is kind of a dystopian tire fire from every angle.

 
I'd love to see a There will be blood-style ass-whoopin' on these parasi... patent trolls.
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I found this concerning Youtube's Content ID.

Qualify for Content ID​

Content ID eligibility is based on various criteria. This criteria includes whether the copyright owner’s content can be claimed through Content ID and their demonstrated need. Copyright owners have to give evidence of the copyrighted content for which they control exclusive rights.
Content ID will match your reference content against every upload to YouTube. Copyright owners must have the exclusive rights to the material that's evaluated. Common examples of items that may not be exclusive to individuals include:
  • mashups, “best of”s, compilations, and remixes of other works
  • video gameplay, software visuals, trailers
  • unlicensed music and video
  • music or video that was licensed, but without exclusivity
  • recordings of performances (including concerts, events, speeches, shows)
If a copyright owner is approved for Content ID, they’ll have to complete an agreement. This agreement will explicitly state that only content with exclusive rights can be used for reference. Also, they'll need to give the geographic locations of exclusive ownership, if not worldwide.
In addition to Content ID, we offer other copyright management tools that might better suit a copyright owner’s needs.
These other tools include:
  • The copyright complaint webform
  • The Content Verification Program (CVP)
  • The Copyright Match Tool
 
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