Cinea Announces Expanded Watermark Support For Current & Next-Generation Codecs

"Dolby Laboratories subsidiary Cinea, has expanded support for its ultralight Running Marks watermarking technology to include compressed domain message insertion in MPEG-2 HD, H.264 SD, and H.264 HD.

With its support for next-generation codec technology, Cinea can provide system operators and suppliers with a comprehensive lightweight approach to forensic watermarking that makes the unique serialization of video streams easy and affordable.

As announced at IBC2006, the Running Marks "ultralight" message inserter is a fundamental component of the Running Marks forensic watermarking technology, enabling unique serialized watermarking across the content distribution chain. The marking of unique video streams offers content owners and system operators the capability to track theft of content back to an individual device.

The patented Running Marks architecture separates the processing-intensive image analysis stage from the efficient message insertion stage. As a result, the Running Marks message inserter can support a wide spectrum of consumer devices, from legacy set-top boxes and media-enabled mobile phones to portable media players and personal computers.

Running Marks is also a fully renewable system. This allows Cinea to quickly and efficiently update watermarks with a revised security code in the event that a Running Marks watermark is ever compromised. It also allows for updates to preprocessing and recovery methods on the back end without requiring changes to equipment already at use in the field."

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