RUNNING MARKS, Cinea's patented watermarking technology, was designed specifically to place forensic data in copyrighted material from the source, through the distribution network and across a broad range of consumer playback devices; from PCs to set-top boxes to portable media player. It counters the most sophisticated piracy techniques while totally preserving image quality.

A forensic video watermarking (serialization watermarking) process marks video with the intent to later recover those marks. The objective is to deter piracy by enabling content owners to track pirated content back to its source. The three steps to adding a forensic watermark are:

• Determine where to place the mark (Image Analysis)
• Determine what information will be in the mark
• Actually insert the mark

Most forensic watermark solutions treat these steps as one operation, which leads to several problems. First, processing the image to determine where to insert the mark is very compute-intensive, requiring a trade off between cost and quality. Second, such monolithic solutions typically rely on a global secret that, if exposed, renders the mark vulnerable to counter measures. Third, it may be problematic to renew the marking method after compromise because doing so would require updating all fielded devices.

Cinea's Unique Advantages
Cinea's patented RUNNING MARKS technology differs from other solutions on the market in a number of critical ways.

• An "ultra-lite" inserter that enables serialization watermarks to be embedded in nearly any modern consumer video device. As a result, RUNNING MARKS™ can apply device-specific marking to individual video copies during playback, enabling piracy tracking back to the source.
• A fully renewable system that provides for security algorithms to be renewed on the back-end, with no need for field upgrades, affording tremendous cost savings when millions of devices have already been deployed.
• A "blind" watermark recovery system which requires no information about the original source content, channel of content distribution, or player. This simplifies the recovery operation for system operators and content owners.
• "Compressed domain" watermarking that affords an additional level of security by allowing the technology to reside within the secure envelope of the digital rights management or conditional access (DRM/CA) provider.
• "Multiple insertion" capabilities that allow watermarks to be embedded across the entire distribution and playback chain, helping content owners to identify sources of leakage or points of vulnerability

How RUNNING MARKS Works
Mark Placement Image Analysis

• The original content is analyzed to locate suitable video regions as place holders for message insertion. Locations are chosen so that messages will be undetectable to the human eye. For each location, two alternate content representations, "mark images," are created and stored for later use.
  
• Image Analysis can be done in any number of locations. In a video distribution system the image analysis can be done at the head-end; done once and stored for VOD content and done in real-time for broadcast content. In a fixed media or electronic delivery application, the image analysis can be done in a post production environment thus preserving creative control and optimizing the marks to the content.
  
• Although mark placement image analysis is the most CPU-intensive function, it only needs to be done once in order to support multiple message creations and insertions as content moves through its normal distribution cycle.

Message Creation

• User messages can be 64-bits long containing, for example, playback device id, playback date and time, and more-according to the specific application requirements. This message data is then encoded to create a highly robust and redundant message stream.

Insertion

• The ultra-light inserter can be integrated at any stage of a multi-node content delivery network, for example: at the head-end, at an interim point, or in the final consumer playback device such as a set-top box, portable media player, PC, or mobile phone. The run-time encoded user message is generated and used to determine which data is placed in each message location.
  
• The insertion process requires only a simple data copy operation and can be implemented with virtually no time or compute overhead. This is critical because it enables insertion in consumer devices with limited computer resources.
  
• The marks are inserted into the compressed stream, while the content is still within the security envelope of the DRM/CA, before the content is decoded for playback.

RUNNING MARKS is available for license to DRM/CA vendors and other content protection vendors.

RUNNING MARKS is integrated into Cinea's S-VIEW and S-TRACK anti-piracy system, which have been used to mark "For Your Consideration" award screeners, Works-In-Progress and internal studio distribution networks.