Forensic Watermarking for Virtual Film Festivals

BERLIN

castLabs, secure digital video delivery solutions provider, ContentArmor the bitstream watermarking vendor and BitCine Technologies (dba CineSend), a leading provider of cloud-based media asset management tools for the film and television industry, have worked together to provide a brand-forward virtual film festival platform that is now being used by over 100 festivals worldwide. As movie theaters around the world remain closed due to COVID-19, film festivals, which usually premiere pre-release films, are shifting to online streaming which requires secured platforms to avoid piracy at all costs.

The CineSend Virtual Festival platform allows film festivals to launch VOD platforms on the web and major OTT platforms such as Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Android TV, Tizen, and webOS. The platform supports white-labelled branding and is easy to set up, launch, and manage. CineSend has tapped castLabs’ and ContentArmor security expertise for their forensic watermarking and multi-DRM services to protect studio grade content with Widevine, PlayReady, and FairPlay Streaming DRM technology. CineSend is using castLabs’ DRMtoday solution together with the company’s Video Toolkit cloud-based service for secure content processing and distribution.

Digital rights management is a key component of protecting content from unauthorized access. However, there are still possibilities for people to pirate content through stream recording methods. Forensic watermarking is a powerful Video Toolkit feature powered by ContentArmor to further protect high-value live and on-demand content with a simple API.

“When we evaluated the market, we found castLabs and their partner ContentArmor to offer the most complete and comprehensive solution to meet our strict security requirements for studio content”, said Colin Carter, CEO of CineSend.

 

A forensic watermark is a sequence of invisible characters or code repeatedly embedded into a video stream to make them difficult to detect and remove. As a result, if an illegal copy is found, the underlying watermark can be used to identify the recipient that has leaked the video. castLabs and ContentArmor have developed a server-based solution operating on CMAF assets that allows CineSend to deploy session-based watermarking on HLS and MPEG-DASH content without the need for third party libraries.

“We pride ourselves at being very efficient and quick in meeting our customers’ needs to provide tailored workflows using the latest technologies. Content security is as relevant as ever during the current times and we are happy to be supporting platforms like CineSend in providing the highest level of protection for studio content. The team at CineSend was able to implement and deploy our solution in just a week,” mentioned Michael Stattmann, CEO at castLabs.

“Our bitstream watermarking technology is a perfect fit to secure the distribution of exclusive content in virtual festivals. It provides Hollywood approved security for both VOD and live events”, added Alain Durand, CEO at ContentArmor.

 

Contact castLabs to learn more information about their solutions, including DRMtoday, player software, and Video Toolkit, or start a free trial for a hands-on approach at finding the best solutions with easy setup and integration.