Watermark?

ChiraBeats · 2017-04-23 04:34:15

What would you guys think about watermarking the videos that get uploaded here?

As you may of heard, one of our members got their videos stolen. A watermark would at least help narrow down the origin of the video, so if it was stolen from here we'd know it and we'd be able to put all our effort into finding who did it, and possibly preventing it from happening in the future.

T145 · 2017-04-23 13:59:07

A watermark would be interesting, but it would need to be in a place where it wouldn't obstruct anything, as well as not be easily removed.

ChiraBeats · 2017-04-23 14:37:35

Not obstructing anything and not easily trimmed? I think anything that isn't obstructing something can be trimmed. Maybe it could be dynamic instead of static. Like a watermark that only shows up at the beginning and like every 30 seconds.

T145 · 2017-04-25 16:07:00

ChiraBeats wrote:

Not obstructing anything and not easily trimmed? I think anything that isn't obstructing something can be trimmed. Maybe it could be dynamic instead of static. Like a watermark that only shows up at the beginning and like every 30 seconds.

That may work. I am curious as to whether it would be possible to place the watermarks dynamically though, and if so, could just have it be automatically placed in the darkest part of the video. Not perfect, but it constantly changing should make it harder for the video to be stolen, and the watermark removed without some effort.

ChiraBeats · 2017-04-27 02:32:24

That's an interesting idea but I wonder how easy that would be. Putting a moving watermark is something, intelligently placing a watermark based on the content of the video is a whole other thing. Any idea how easy it'd be to detect that kind of thing? Know of any tool/software to do something like that?

T145 · 2017-04-27 16:56:20

ChiraBeats wrote:

That's an interesting idea but I wonder how easy that would be. Putting a moving watermark is something, intelligently placing a watermark based on the content of the video is a whole other thing. Any idea how easy it'd be to detect that kind of thing? Know of any tool/software to do something like that?

Can't say from prior experience, unfortunately. Doesn't seem to be too hard if you get the colour of the pixel or something and work with that, but that is likely easier said than done.

ChiraBeats · 2017-04-28 14:27:46

Yeah, a little bit. Maybe I'm just overthinking things like I always do, do we really need a big fancy moving dynamically placed watermark? There's a reason watermarks are placed in the corner anyways, because nobody puts serious content in the corner, and even if some content ended up there by accident that's why you give it transparency.

T145 · 2017-04-30 15:03:33

ChiraBeats wrote:

Yeah, a little bit. Maybe I'm just overthinking things like I always do, do we really need a big fancy moving dynamically placed watermark? There's a reason watermarks are placed in the corner anyways, because nobody puts serious content in the corner, and even if some content ended up there by accident that's why you give it transparency.

The issue with it being in the corner though, is that it would be fairly easy to crop out. At which point, we'd hit the entire problem all over again. lol

paperpenguin · 2017-04-30 17:48:58

Do it like a DVD player screensaver and have it bounce around on screen constantly.

For added dissatisfaction, pick a starting angle that ensures it never lands square in the corner.

Diff · 2017-04-30 19:27:09

paperpenguin wrote:

For added dissatisfaction, pick a starting angle that ensures it never lands square in the corner.

You're a monster

daitod · 2017-05-09 17:01:50

ChiraBeats wrote:

What would you guys think about watermarking the videos that get uploaded here?
As you may of heard, one of our members got their videos stolen. A watermark would at least help narrow down the origin of the video, so if it was stolen from here we'd know it and we'd be able to put all our effort into finding who did it, and possibly preventing it from happening in the future.

It's my opinion that the people who steal & re-post other people's stuff don't care if there's a watermark or a copyright or identifying metadata in the file. They re-post to get attention and their audience is happy to give it to them. I see stuff everywhere with "Do Not Repost" advisements in them, plain and clear, with no attempt from the thief to cover it up. They don't care. In fact, I'd guess that the thieves leave the marks alone on purpose, for "thug cred", because, you know, they're Yo Ho Ho Red Beard pirate downloading bad asses ...

It's my opinion that what you need is a method of uniquely and positively ID'ing a file; something that you can take to YouTube or PornHub or Tumblr or where ever the file is re-posted with evidence that the file belongs to you and was stolen. But even that is difficult. I know professional artists who live off their work and even they can't keep up.

My best suggestion is to use the thieves to benefit yourself. For video (the most popular stolen content) artists should promote their website or blog in their work. Write it on a sign in the foreground. Post it on the wall in the background. Stick it on the bell of your stethoscope. If the thieves are going to take your video and re-post it, make them promote you every time they do.

I would also show the date in the scene somewhere so thieves can't easily claim that the file is something they made themselves, yesterday.

Audio is trickier, since adding anything interferes with the subject. But adding a pre-recorded, spoken header and footer would be relatively easy. You don't even need to use your own voice; a friend or fellow "cardiophile" across the Internet could record some words for you to paste at the start & end of your files. Yes; it could just as easily be cut out, but anything to make it a nuisance to steal your stuff is to your advantage.

ChiraBeats · 2017-05-11 17:01:23

daitod wrote:

Audio is trickier, since adding anything interferes with the subject. But adding a pre-recorded, spoken header and footer would be relatively easy. You don't even need to use your own voice; a friend or fellow "cardiophile" across the Internet could record some words for you to paste at the start & end of your files. Yes; it could just as easily be cut out, but anything to make it a nuisance to steal your stuff is to your advantage.

One option there could be overlaying some ultrasonic ID. And honestly, since it's audio you could probably get away with overlaying a unique ID per user so you know who stole it as well as where they stole it from. With video that's not really possible though. It's hard enough processing video files the first time, re-encoding it with a little user-specific overlay is way out there.

T145 · 2017-05-20 17:36:27

ChiraBeats wrote:

daitod wrote:
Audio is trickier, since adding anything interferes with the subject. But adding a pre-recorded, spoken header and footer would be relatively easy. You don't even need to use your own voice; a friend or fellow "cardiophile" across the Internet could record some words for you to paste at the start & end of your files. Yes; it could just as easily be cut out, but anything to make it a nuisance to steal your stuff is to your advantage.
One option there could be overlaying some ultrasonic ID. And honestly, since it's audio you could probably get away with overlaying a unique ID per user so you know who stole it as well as where they stole it from. With video that's not really possible though. It's hard enough processing video files the first time, re-encoding it with a little user-specific overlay is way out there.

Ultrasonic ID is an interesting idea, but can the codec even carry that kind of thing? Not to mention how you would pick the ID back up. lol

Diff · 2017-05-21 01:57:49

T145 wrote:

ChiraBeats wrote:
daitod wrote:
Audio is trickier, since adding anything interferes with the subject. But adding a pre-recorded, spoken header and footer would be relatively easy. You don't even need to use your own voice; a friend or fellow "cardiophile" across the Internet could record some words for you to paste at the start & end of your files. Yes; it could just as easily be cut out, but anything to make it a nuisance to steal your stuff is to your advantage.
One option there could be overlaying some ultrasonic ID. And honestly, since it's audio you could probably get away with overlaying a unique ID per user so you know who stole it as well as where they stole it from. With video that's not really possible though. It's hard enough processing video files the first time, re-encoding it with a little user-specific overlay is way out there.
Ultrasonic ID is an interesting idea, but can the codec even carry that kind of thing? Not to mention how you would pick the ID back up. lol

Sure, if I'm understanding things right, the typical sampling rate of 44100 leaves us with a max sound frequency of 22050, so about 2KHz of unhearable audio we can stuff whatever identification we want inside.

paperpenguin · 2017-05-21 02:30:11

Captain Spoilsport™ to the... what's the opposite of 'rescue' again?

So, you theoretically get this 2KHz band that you can use for a watermark. Two potential issues:

1) A lot of people are still going to hear this, either as a shrill whine or some kind of distortion, not just because of differences in hearing acuity, but also playback hardware.

B) Assuming you can even get ostensibly inaudible frequencies to stay intact through a lossy codec, they would be deadass simple to EQ out on purpose. Heck, they would likely even get compressed out inadvertently by site codecs when reuploading elsewhere.

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#1 2017-04-23 04:34:15

Watermark?

#2 2017-04-23 13:59:07

Re: Watermark?

#3 2017-04-23 14:37:35

Re: Watermark?

#4 2017-04-25 16:07:00

Re: Watermark?

#5 2017-04-27 02:32:24

Re: Watermark?

#6 2017-04-27 16:56:20

Re: Watermark?

#7 2017-04-28 14:27:46

Re: Watermark?

#8 2017-04-30 15:03:33

Re: Watermark?

#9 2017-04-30 17:48:58

Re: Watermark?

#10 2017-04-30 19:27:09

Re: Watermark?

#11 2017-05-09 17:01:50

Re: Watermark?

#12 2017-05-11 17:01:23

Re: Watermark?

#13 2017-05-20 17:36:27

Re: Watermark?

#14 2017-05-21 01:57:49

Re: Watermark?

#15 2017-05-21 02:30:11

Re: Watermark?

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