Watermarking is an old technique
which content owners use to discourage the unauthorized use of their content.
Image watermarking techniques can be used in video frames as well, because a
video asset considered a collection of video frames. With the arrival of OTT
platforms, forensic watermarking in video assets has become a go-to rule for
premium content owners, as piracy is rampant in this space.
The process of inserting
identifiable data within each frame of the unique copy of a video file is known
as invisible or forensic watermarking. Such a watermark is a code or collection
of characters encoded in a digital document, video, audio, image, or program
that allows the content owner, the user, and the playback session among other
indicators to be uniquely identified.
The test of a good forensic
watermark rests on the principle that it should stay undetectable, store large
enough payload, and be impossible to remove without compromising the host
video beyond recognition. Such a watermark should make security as its
paramount concern in the sense that hackers cannot tamper it easily. In the
digital rights management (DRM) business, video watermarking has become popular ever since the
OTT sector has expanded to cover all geographies in the world.
There are multiple reasons why
forensic watermarking in used by premium content owners and OTT platforms. For
example, every big media player wants to monitor its audience through analytics
and other means. One way to measure audience engagement is by embedding the
audio on TV channels with channel names. The device at the viewer’s end can
decrypt this code and send it to a monitoring company, which then collates this
data to decide the size of audience.
Whenever a Hollywood film is
released, it is sent as preview or pre-release copies to media outlets,
bloggers, and independent viewers. This limited distribution is fraught with
dangers, as the film can reach the piracy ecosystem even before it has hit
theaters. Production houses bank on forensic watermarks in such cases when it
is not possible to send out DRM
protected content.
Forensic watermarks become a handy
tool to beat illegal recordings in movie theaters, which add information like
screen time and theater IDs in watermarks. In the event of an illegal recording
taking place in cinemas, they can extract watermarks from pirated copies to
know the time and place of recording.
On the other hand, in the case of
visible video watermarking, the video asset has a loud logo which apart from
adding to the branding of the content owner also deters base users from
indulging in content copying and reselling.
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