4K Watermarking: Why It’s Important and Here to Stay
The Movie and TV industry is embracing 4K more and more, with world famous service providers like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Vudu and YouTube already offering content in 4K. The term 4K has morphed into what is now commonly referred to as UltraHD to not only refer its enhanced spatial resolution (4K pixels per line of video) but also increased color gamut, brightness and contrast. This has changed the quality game and providers have, not surprisingly, been quick to embrace it.
However, the continually evolving digital revolution has also extended the technological options for pirates developing new forms of illegal extraction and redistribution. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before that same behavior permeated into 4K with last August’s leak of the Breaking Bad pilot off Netflix.
Around the same time, there was expressed concern regarding content law evasion associated with smartphone users illegally broadcasting content – particularly TV shows and live sports programming – on live-streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat. This shows that, while 4K content is preferable, pirates are willing to settle for low quality content to ensure that they can access the content they want.
With a commitment to creating 4K content, however, comes the necessity to not only invest more into making it, but to generate more revenue. More money at stake means content owners have to be that much more proactive at addressing the dangers of piracy to protect their assets. This is especially applicable to Hollywood studios and sports networks. Both parties have demonstrated determination to tackle piracy head on, especially following the amended MovieLabs guidelines that mandate 4K-playing and distribution platforms to employ forensic watermarking, facilitating the detection and location of breaches.
Watermarking of 4K content has been in practice for years in Digital Cinema, which is precisely why the watermarking industry was quick to adapt is offerings to the PayTV and online video market.. This means service providers complying with the MovieLabs guidelines are already able to offer 4K content on their platforms without having to worry about losing revenue to illegal re-streaming since the original source can easily be traced and blocked before it spreads online – making it the perfect deterrent for tech-savvy pirates.
About the Writer
Jaap Haitsma is CTO at Civolution’s NexGuard, who provides the most widely deployed forensic watermarking solutions in the movie and entertainment industry across the globe. Jaap started his career in 1997 as a Research Scientist at Philips Research. For 7 years, he developed algorithms for watermarking and fingerprinting of audio and video content. Based on the output of this research, a business unit was formed at Philips to commercialize these algorithms, and in 2004, Jaap joinedthis unit as CTO to setup its R&D department. This business unit within Philips was spun out as Civolution in 2008. Currently Jaap serves as CTO of the NexGuard group at Civolution and leads R&D. Jaap has more than 20 granted US patents, published various scientific articles and has been an invited speaker at both scientific and industry conferences.
About NexGuard
NexGuard is the worldwide market leader in forensic watermarking technology and provides solutions that have been deployed in over 100,000 movie screens around the world for the protection of media assets against illicit redistribution in pre-release, digital cinema, pay TV and OTT streaming. Working closely with Hollywood studios, payTV operators and premium sports content owners and broadcasters, NexGuard’s solutions play a significant part in the content rights discussions, leading to forensic watermarking being mandated in the latest MovieLabs guidelines. The company has recently made a push into 4K with the announcement of its Ultra HD Forum membership and its demonstration of 4K-ready subscriber-level, e-screener and pre-release watermarking technologies at IBC.
For more information, visit: http://www.nexguard.com/.
