Real-time digital video watermark embedding system based on software in commodity PC

Abstract

Emerging broadband networks and high performance of PCs provide new business opportunities of the live video streaming services for the Internet users in sport events or in music concerts. Digital watermarking for video helps to protect the copyright of the video content and the real-time processing is an essential requirement. For the small start of new business, it should be achieved by flexible software without special equipments. This paper describes a novel real-time watermarking system implemented on a commodity PC. We propose the system architecture and methods to shorten watermarking time by reusing the estimated watermark imperceptibility among neighboring frames. A prototype system enables real time processing in a series of capturing NTSC signals, watermarking the video, encoding it to MPEG4 in QGVA, 1Mbps, 30fps style and storing the video for 12 hours in maximum.