Single Frame Forensic Watermarking Case Study
Introduction
The BluMark frame based forensic video watermarking solution is provided by Media Science International I(MSI). BluMark technology can trace back the copyright of illegally delivered videos. This is accomplished through hiding imperceptible watermark information in video frames throughout media content. These watermarks can be extracted from any video segment even under very extreme attacks such as recompression, geometrical deformations adding noise, or many other processes as described below.
The BluMark watermarking technology is unique among its peers. Both the process for inserting watermark and the process of extracting the watermark can be done on very short samples of video within a few frames taking seconds compared to minutes with other watermarking solutions that are in use today. The watermarking process can be embedded into a soft or hard transcoder such as an SDK or a standalone command line program. This makes it convenient to integrate with asset management applications while minimizing the performance requirement of the watermarking process.
Using BluMark:
- Upload file to Amazon S3 bucket.
- Input the filename into the BluMark UI.
- Select desired number of individually watermarked output files.
- Provide an output filename e.g. Sample_Vide_WM.mp4
- Key in metadata.
- Submit.
Once watermarking is complete BluMark will make available the desired number of watermarked output files in the direct Amazon S3 bucket.
Submitting Metadata: Metadata can be submitted in one of two methods. The first is by keying in the files metadata to be added during the watermarking process.
An alternative method is by using a simple web-service API to submit file metadata information to the global metadata database.
Robustness
The BluMark watermarking technology has been tested to assess the level to which it is robust to manipulation. The results of industry standard watermark testing show that the BluMark watermark is recoverable in the instances it was tested and confirm that BluMark is robust for commercial use and comparable to other forensic watermarking solutions being used in the market place today. Furthermore, the tests confirmed that the watermark was recoverable in 3 to 7 seconds depending on the content type and length. Detailed results can be provided upon request.
Test Criteria & Areas of Manipulation
Case Study
MarcoPolo Learning: MarcoPolo, which is a global leader in children’s learning, sought BluMark frame based forensic video watermarking to service its pre-release educational content, for their global partners in production and broadcast.
MarcoPolo Specifications:
- Forensically watermark short form animation < 30 seconds through full length episodes and lessons.
- Rapid, automated blind detection in seconds using any length of video with a robust, invisible payload imperceptible to viewers.
- Commercially viable economics for protecting original content
- Simple to integrate into any customer pipeline.
As an educational company, MarcoPolo’s content ranged from 30 second content to full length episodes. MarcoPolo therefore required a robust, imperceptible payload that could be inserted in to an array of content types of varying lengths. Another important aspect for MarcoPolo is blind, automated detection using various lengths of watermarked video, understanding that the watermark must survive and be retrievable from trimmed lengths and regions of interest. However, the most compelling factors in MarcoPolo’s decision in choosing BluMark was its economical, simple to integrate SDK & API and BluMark’s flexible programmatic and web-app access allowing simple integration in little is a day.
BluMark provides MarcoPolo with the ability to rapidly watermark content of any length using two methods: Programmatic and Web-App Access.
BluMark Programmatic Access: This method of access, typically used in watermarking and moving files between production staff provides MarcoPolo with the ability to pick up any type of video file from AWS S3, watermark, and output the desired watermarked format with a simple CURL command.
BluMark Web-App Access: Alternatively, this method is employed by MarcoPolo’s marketing and operational staff in delivering assets for broadcast, promotion, and consideration. Here a user simply adds the video file to their S3 bucket, directs BluMark to the input and the watermarking engine handles the rest.
BluMark Features
➢ Forensically watermark content of durations < 30 seconds through full-length feature films of any type and size.
➢ Optimized support for dailies, clips, and short-form animations.
➢ Blind Detection
➢ Frame based forensic digital video watermarking engine supports session based, frame by frame temporal-spatial watermark embedding throughout the duration of the content.
➢ File stream frame-based watermark detector performs rapid sampling and detailed frame by frame analysis displaying real-time payload detection result.
➢ Robust, imperceptible 56-bit payloads survive all common quality and geometric attacks. Independently watermarked frames allow enhanced survivability under length, trim, and merge attacks.
➢ Golden-eye tested for imperceptibly, watermarked content free of visual distortions.
➢ Economical solution for organizations of any size to watermark
➢ Simple, well documented API and SDK allow for quick low-cost integrations to existing transcoding and asset management systems.
➢ Economically viable solution for protecting rightsholder content at every stage.
➢ BluMark desktop and BluMark OnDemand applications facilitate secure offline and remote programmatic and web-app access.
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