StreamMark from Verimatrix
June 7, 2011
Multi-screen digital TV service revenue security specialist Verimatrix has unveiled its latest innovation in user-specific forensic watermarking, StreamMark. The patent-pending solution uses a highly-efficient server-side embedding process to uniquely mark compressed video files during delivery, even if the video files are encrypted.
Verimatrix says that mass delivery of uniquely marked content offers a valuable tool to support revenue generation in emerging video consumption models. StreamMark was developed in collaboration with major film studios and is specifically designed to enable early release windows for premium video on demand (VoD) content.
StreamMark embeds robust, secure and imperceptible tracing information in compressed content in an on-the-fly process during delivery to standard decoders and media players. Because the embedding process is designed with extremely low overhead requirements, a mark can be easily added to H.264 or MPEG-2 stream-based video with negligible performance impact, even when that delivery is facilitated through a content delivery network (CDN). StreamMark can easily be integrated in today’s distribution networks using existing infrastructure, processing power and storage.
Verimatrix suggests that for consumer electronics devices, this streaming friendly tracing insertion approach means that no custom media player integration is required – the imperceptible marking information is rendered in all analogue and digital outputs of off-the-shelf player devices. StreamMark joins the company’s flagship user-specific forensic watermarking solution, VideoMark, which uses a client-side watermarking technique to provide real-time, session-based video traceability that offers an alternative that limits integration on the client side.
“The FCC’ s ruling allowing selectable output control (SOC) for set-top boxes in the US was one of the key developments that opened up significant new revenue opportunities with higher value VOD at earlier release windows. And with new release windows come new piracy challenges,” said Petr Peterka, CTO of Verimatrix. “Studios are now insisting on a combination of SOC and forensic watermarking technologies that secure assets beyond the set-top. StreamMark meets this challenge by offering an efficient server-side watermarking technique that enables unique file delivery on a large scale basis on existing networks,” he claimed.