A forensic case file for independent film.
Find out who leaked your film.
Sonatine puts an invisible code in every screener you send. Each copy is tied to one recipient. If a copy leaks, we read the code back out and give you the name. Then we help you take it down.
Prepared for festivals, sales agents, and distributors.
Three steps, from a screener to a name.
The method is plain, and we will walk you through every step of it.
Watermark
Before a screener goes out, we embed an invisible 64-bit code in the video. Every recipient gets their own copy with their own code. The picture looks identical. The code is unique to that person.
Trace
When a copy turns up online, we read the code back out of the file. It survives re-encoding, resizing, and renaming. The code resolves to one name on your recipient list, and the match has to clear a strict margin before we report it.
Take down
We draft the takedown notice with the evidence attached. A person reviews and sends every notice. Nothing legal goes out on autopilot. We track each one until the copy is gone, and we report how long it took.
One result from our own bench.
We are a new company, so we show you the engine instead of a logo wall. This is a real extraction from our test suite, reproduced without retouching.
Specimen: a marked screener downscaled to 480p and re-encoded, the way a real leak travels. We recovered the code and compared it against every copy that was issued. The figures count how many of the 64 bits disagree, so a lower number means a closer match.
| Recipient 1 | 12 of 64 MATCH |
| Recipient 2 | 27 of 64 clear |
| Recipient 3 | 31 of 64 clear |
| Recipient 4 | 34 of 64 clear |
Traced to one recipient: a single copy clears the threshold, and the nearest innocent copy sits 15 bits away.
The gap is the product. A trace without a margin is a guess, and naming the wrong person would be worse than naming no one. If no copy clears the threshold, we report no match.
Leaks do not happen politely.
Real leaks are re-encoded, renamed, recorded, and shared. The engine is built for exactly these conditions.
Measured, not promised.
We do not have case studies yet. We have an engine that we test rigorously and can demonstrate on demand. Every figure below comes from our own test bench.
Built for the people leaks hurt most.
Festivals
Hundreds of juror screeners go out on tight deadlines, and every copy traces back to one juror.
Sales agents
Pre-market screeners go to buyers worldwide, and any leak traces to the exact buyer it was sent to.
Distributors
Independent slates cannot absorb a pre-release leak, so you get deterrence first and evidence when you need it.
Four things you will never get from us.
No invented losses.
You will never see a made-up revenue figure on your dashboard. If we report a number, a file backs it.
No accusation without margin.
Naming the wrong juror would be worse than naming no one. If a trace does not clear the threshold, we say so and keep working.
No auto-sent notices.
The system drafts the takedown. A person reviews and sends it. Every time.
No borrowed credibility.
We are new. We have no logo wall and no testimonials, and we will not fake either. The proof is the demonstration.
Plain pricing, shaped like the work.
Every plan runs the full engine: watermarking, tracing, collusion detection, and drafted takedowns. Every engagement starts with a free live trace, so you see it work before you pay. After that you pay the way the work arrives, by the festival edition, by the month for an ongoing slate, or by the title for a one-off. All prices in Canadian dollars.
| Plan | Rate | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| FestivalRecommended start | from $2,500 / edition | A full jury and press program in one edition. This is where most festivals begin with us, and a full-scale program runs up to $7,500. | Watermarked copies for every recipient, consent-recorded delivery links with one-click revocation, tracing, collusion detection, and takedown drafting across the edition. Priced by program size, never per recipient. |
| Slate | from $799 / mo | A year-round slate, for distributors and sales agents. | The full engine across your whole slate, plus content matching for renamed copies, torrent and Telegram monitoring, and priority trace turnaround. Two months free on an annual plan. |
| Forensic Desk | from $2,500 / mo | A working slate with a forensic team on call. | Everything in Slate, plus full-slate monitoring, geographic threat reporting, takedown timing reports, an evidence pack for every confirmed incident, and dedicated forensic support. Two months free on an annual plan. |
| Single Title | $450 / title | A single film, one-off, going to market or to a jury. If you are issuing across several titles, the Slate plan fits better. | The full engine for that title: per-recipient watermarked screeners, tracing to a named recipient, collusion detection, and drafted takedowns. |
Festivals begin with a free Watermark Desk for one edition. Distributors and sales agents have three founding-member slots open before this season, with the rate locked for as long as you stay. We discount the commitment, never the number. Not sure which plan fits your release? Write to us and we will tell you straight, even if the answer is that none does yet.
Watch a trace happen.
Bring a clip from your own slate. On a single call, we watermark it to a test recipient while you watch, damage the file the way a pirate would, then run the trace until the right name comes back. The whole demonstration takes about thirty minutes. If a trace ever comes back empty, you will see that honestly too.
Email contact@sonatine.caOne call, one real file, and a name at the end of it.