Cinea Inc., a subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories Inc. and provider of content-protection and watermarking products, has launched a new approach to watermarking video-on-demand content.
The new functionality of Cinea's watermarking technology, Running Marks, allows system operators to add serialization capabilities to their content distribution networks with a software upgrade to their network servers. The watermarking services can be deployed without any additional server power, involves no change in the distribution infrastructure, and requires no updates to devices already deployed in the field, according to the company.
Forensic watermarking (or media serialization) enables a session-specific ID or serial number to be placed in every video stream sent from a system operator into a home. By watermarking individual streams, the natural flow of distributed content remains untouched and uninterrupted, yet pirated content can be traced back to the source.
The new seamless support for VOD headend servers expands upon the company's previously announced support for watermarking on a wide range of consumer video devices, including legacy set-top boxes, portable media players, personal computers, and mobile phones. Collectively, Running Marks provides an uninterrupted layer of security that follows the content path from source to end user device.
In addition to the new VOD functionality, Cinea also announced Running Marks support for the H.264 advanced video codec, baseband video, and live broadcast.
