Videonet - news, blogs and analysis for the pay-tv industry

• 13-Nov-2009 by Philip Hunter
• Watermarking leaves pirates high and dry
• Content

Digital watermarking can now deliver on its fundamental promise, which is to embed an imperceptible yet indelible mark into the video in real time, resistant even to severe picture degradation resulting from scaling, cropping, compression, and crucially camcorder copying. Indeed it is the ability of digital watermarking to deter piracy that has led to some of the early adoptions, as content houses and operators realise this enables them to release premium material earlier and distribute it securely. They no longer need to rely on the post which itself has proved to be risky, since security then depends on the integrity of a third party, the postman.

Among recent adoptions by serious content players, Studio Canal, the French based production and distribution company with the third largest film library in the world, has adopted the NexGuard digital watermarking solution from Civolution. Studio Canal uses the digital watermarking in combination with encryption based access control for distribution of the advance screeners sent to critics, stores and so on via memory sticks. The piracy risk has led to declining distribution of screeners in recent years, with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) ceasing sending them to Academy members in 2003 for that reason. Studio Canal says that the use of digital watermarking will not only restore distribution of screeners, stimulating the film and TV industry as a whole, but improve their quality. Previously Studio Canal distributed screeners by DVD incorporating highly visible and aggravating anti-copyright displays.  “Illicit copies of our screeners are just a bad memory now,” said a Studio Canal spokesperson. “The smart combination of access control and traceability gives us security and offers peace of mind to our customers given that they no longer face the risk of losing the DVDs.”

The spokesperson pointed out that the advantage of being able to trace content was primarily psychological, acting to deter pirates while giving both film buyers and studios the confidence to transmit premium content in advance, and perhaps to migrate to the Internet in future. The latter will happen as and when confidence in digital watermarking grows. With the memory sticks, PIN codes for decoding the content on the recipient’s PC or other device are sent separately by email, but perhaps this may have to be done more securely for Internet distribution.

The screeners are transmitted for Studio Canal by content post-production and distribution house Quinta Industries, which decided to incorporate the NexGuard Content Protection solution originally developed by Thomson STS before the product’s purchase by Civolution. This followed a successful trial of the system for the Cannes’ 2009 Film Market.

The ability to stem loss of premium content at the screener stage is highly valuable and will effectively boost revenues for production houses, according to Quinta Industries’ head of new technologies Jean Pierre Boiget. “Leakage can be extremely damaging, revealing story elements, and propagating unfinished, bad quality scenes,” said Boiget. “Or it may just reveal the existence of the movie project.”

Meanwhile digital watermarking is fast expanding from its roots in content tracing to a host of new applications. In principle it can be used for any application involving the execution of business rules or logic on the basis of the content’s identity and history, according to Jeri Owen, VP of marketing at watermarking vendor Digimarc.

Such applications include audience measurement - US ratings agency Nielsen uses Digimarc watermarking this way, with plans to extend this for metering Internet content. “Our joint venture with Nielsen will use the watermarks for identifying TV on the Internet and via mobile devices to create new monetization opportunities and enhance consumer experiences,” said Owen.  

Most recently watermarking has been tried in a different guise for injecting interactivity into newspapers and magazines in conjunction with mobile phones. Here the user photographs the watermark identifying a location in the publication with their phone, which then transmits it to a central server. The relevant content is then played on the phone.

On this front, Spanish mobile services provider AquaMobile announced in September 2009 that readers of the Autofácil magazine can now view videos, listen to statements,  or access related information with one click of their mobile phones. This is achieved via CLIC2C, software that can recognize digital watermarking in printed materials and link to multimedia content via any mobile phone.

Digimarc, provider of AquaMobile’s watermarking technology, believes that this application is just the beginning. “Our vision for the future is that the mobile phone will become a “seeing and hearing” device that will be able to respond to its environment in many new and amazing - and highly useful ways,” said Owen.  “The phone will know where it is, its context, user preferences and history of actions, etc.  Digimarc envisions a world where all media and many objects will have a unique digital identity.  This will enable the mobile phone to “see, hear and understand” its surroundings and respond.  We believe digital watermarking will enable this.”

Another fertile area for digital watermarking lies in online video search, which has looked a difficult problem to solve, given the limitations of describing content with textual metadata. “We believe digital watermarking has great relevance to the future of online search,” said Owen.  “We are seeing more and more applications using visual search, and as you know, digital watermarks can be embedded into images, giving them a unique identity.  Once embedded with a digital ID, the images can be searched for and identified wherever they may travel across the web. “

Digital watermarking then looks set to be a pivotal technology on at least three major fronts for digital content – online distribution, search, and mobile convergence.

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