At NAB2005, Nextamp demonstrated its new NexMaster’s system. It inserts a digital watermark into an MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 encoded file of HD content.
NexMaster removed those limitations and inserted a unique identifier into a video file post compression. The solution creates an invisible watermarking of individual copies, which acts as a digital fingerprint that can be assigned and created for each individual recipient of the file. The embedded mark dissuades recipients from illicitly reusing content.
Using Envivio encoding systems in the demonstration, visitors tried to see the difference between a video file that contains a digital watermark and one that doesn’t. However, they weren’t able to. The watermark is a virtual barcode that is embedded in the essence of the video. Even if the video has been edited or undergone format changes, the invisible stamp stays with it, providing forensic tracking capabilities to trace a marked video file back to its source.
Such indelible ID stamping enables forensic tracking for both illegal file-swapping on the Internet and pirated DVD editions. As a fingerprint of the original recipient for the genuine copy, it makes it easy to localize the infringing party.
The NAB demonstrations leveraged the Envivio 4Coder HD encoder to generate MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 files of contribution type quality for HD video. The resulting files are then processed using Nextamp’s NexMaster for watermark embedding directly within H.264 format. Once encoded, it is easy to generate several individual copies, each with a unique watermark.
For more information, visit www.nextamp.com.
