UMID Watermarking for Managing Metadata in Content Production

Watermarking is a technique for embedding data within images or audio and is best known in the field of copyright protection. This paper explains how watermarking can be used to embed a unique material identifier (UMID) into every frame of video material to enable content tracking throughout the production chain. As the UMID is embedded into the image itself, it cannot be separated and hence lost. The UMID is embedded at the point of acquisition and enables the linking of the video material to its associated metadata for rights tracking, technical information, or added-value data services in digital broadcasting. In order to allow a change of UMID, the watermark may be removed, or “washed”, and a new UMID embedded with no significant generation loss.

Published

2001-11

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00989

ISBN

978-1-61482-935-5