The document discusses solutions for identifying content ownership and managing premium video-on-demand content delivery. It describes fingerprinting and watermarking techniques that can identify content, monitor its distribution, and provide analytics to content owners. These techniques provide complementary ways to persistently track content across different formats and generations.

1. Latent Content Identification for
Delivery of Premium VOD
Fingerprinting and Watermarking Solutions to Identify, Manage, and
Monetize Content
November 2011
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2. • New Business Models such as Premium VOD (PVOD) and “TV Everywhere”
(TVE) initiatives placing content earlier and on more devices.
• Content Piracy concerns remain high priority for content owners and service
providers, especially in early release windows.
• Advertising platforms and ad-spend models rapidly evolving to web, mobile, etc.
• Second-screen initiatives developing for ancillary content running in parallel to
main content distribution method.
• Content ownership requirements evolving to require solutions for:
Identifying content ownership
Managing the use of that content
Monitoring where the content is and how it is being viewed (e.g. terrestrial, mobile,
tablet)
Gathering statistical consumption data to provide further analytics to the content owner
and service provider.
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3. • Creates a signal and then INSERTS it invisibly into the content.
• Intrusive as it generates a new version of the original content.
• Designed for robustness to video format change and survive successive
copies, detected by software.
+ =
Brightness Contrast Blurring Video compression
Source: 2008 International Conference on Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering
Resizing Frame rate change
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4. • Unlike Watermarking, which creates a signal and then INSERTS it invisibly into the
content, fingerprinting DERIVES a signature of the content based on characteristics
of that content.
• Fingerprints are unique to that unit of content and independent from video format.
• Fingerprint matching can then be used to locate content, identify ownership, etc.
010100101100001...
Database
010100101100001... 01010101...
010100101100001...
Image Unique Creation of Reference
Original Video
Sampling Characteristics Fingerprint Fingerprints
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5. • Traditionally, visible overlays (AKA channel branding) to superimpose
broadcast ownership logos.
• Visible overlays used to issue “take-down notices”, when content
appearing on unauthorized websites.
• Watermarks and Fingerprints are complementary to effectively track how
content is being viewed and to supply information on that usage.
• Effective methods to persist information about the content regardless of
the format permutation or generation/modification.
• The presence of the fingerprint database ensures that the owner of the
content can always be identified. Watermark can further identify
versions, distribution channels or individual recipients.
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6. • Each or both can be applied to the following activities. All of these areas
are encountered in both the traditional broadcasting methodologies as
well as the latest VOD, OTT and TV Everywhere initiatives:
• Media Management
• Media Tracking
• Media Monitoring
For content creation,
• Media Filtering promotion, distribution,
• Media Measurement VOD, airing and
TV Everywhere.
• Media Synchronization
• Media Triggering
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7. Watermarking based Fingerprinting based
w/ asset identifier as watermark payload Asset management
Identify distribution channels Search for duplicates in a
or territories video library
Identify content versions Re-use of video sequences
w/ source identifier and timestamp Broadcast monitoring
Broadcast monitoring for Radio (music, commercials)
news, commercials, sport events TV (episodic and movie catalog)
Audience measurement Song recognition for rights
Synchronization of apps collection or apps
w/ serial numbers as watermark payload Internet monitoring, filtering
Forensic tracking in and monetization
B2B workflows, D-cinema, Filtering upon ingest
Premium VOD, Pay TV Take down notices
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8. Aggregation, Core Access Nexus
7k
• Nexus 7K (DCB, FCoE, VoQ w/ Central Arbitration, Deep Buffers, Density)
• Editing (Nexus 7K is Avid approved)
* Design guidelines
NAS
Multi Tier Storage
• SAN Storage – Distributed (1,2,4,8Gbps) SAN
• Cisco MDS 9k FC Switch
• NAS – 10Gbps, L2/L3 (NFS, CIFs,…) Other
(e.g. Avid ISIS)
MDS 9k
FC Switch
Unified Fabric = Wire Once 10G CNA 10G
10G
• UCS 6k, Nexus 5k, Nexus 2k Ethernet Nexus
• Data Center Ethernet (DCE) UCS 6k FI
5k
• 10 Gbps (Lossless, Low Latency)
Fiber
• Converged Network Adapters (CNA) Channel
• Fiber Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE) DCE/FCoE N2k FEX
UCS Compute
• Hi Density (B)
• Scalable Compute
(Core Procs, Mem, Net)
• Bare Metal Servers
• Virtual Servers
Cisco UCS-B CiscoCisco Confidential
UCS-C 8
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9. www.ciscoknowledgenetwork.com
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