Increased demand for OTT and VoD material has also led to an increase in piracy of premium content. DRM-protected content now needs to be secured once it reaches the user’s device using forensic watermarking methods. There are two types of forensic watermarking: A/B and bitstream-based.
Streaming sessions are watermarked using A/B watermarking, which generates two separate watermarks for each session, A and B. These streams are then divided into segments, which are subsequently joined to generate a single stream with a unique combination of A and B segments. Bitstream watermarking, on the other hand, inserts the watermark during streaming in real time via edge servers.
It is possible to further divide A/B variant watermarking into manifest-level and client-side watermarking. Two unique watermarked video files are combined to form a unique user-specific watermark that is transmitted to users in manifest level video watermarking. A drawback of A/B watermarking is that, in comparison to non-watermarked content, the two variants for each segment necessitate double storage/caching. As time- and resource-intensive and requiring a large amount of storage space, it may not be suitable for some applications such as live streaming.
Using a cloud-based watermark extraction service that works well even with low-quality and recompressed videos, it is possible to verify the owner of the content and track down the source of the piracy. Client-side watermarking, A/B or manifest-level watermarking, and bitstream-based watermarking are three broad categories of watermarking solutions.
An effective video watermarking service must be able to deter piracy, identify the piracy outlets, and take the necessary steps to prevent leakage of the video content. In order to detect piracy, keep an eye out for suspicious activity and compare the digital fingerprints of suspicious files to the production fingerprint. The watermarking software is then able to identify the watermark and extract the information contained therein. Resize and collusion attempts, for example, shouldn’t affect the robustness of the watermark. It should also remain legible even after the content has been altered. It’s also possible to take legal action after discovering the source of a stream that is being illegally downloaded.
One watermarked version of content is combined with the other by a client-side agent playing DRM protected content in order to create a user-specific version. It is the client video player that combines the video segments rather than the edge server. However, the logic is exposed because the watermark is placed in a hostile environment (on the client side). For example, a debugger can be used to disable and bypass watermarking. Reverse engineering the agent’s exposed JavaScript code or meddling with the DOM are two approaches to accomplish this. JavaScript obfuscation (the process of making the code difficult to decipher and reverse engineer) and real-time DOM monitoring can both help content providers avoid these issues and protect their users from harmful assaults. JavaScript protection may also include anti-tampering and anti-debugging features. In the case of an attack, this prevents any dynamic or static code analysis of the web player.
