digital asset protection feature
Figure 3: Integration of watermarking into a CDN network.
leverage their network to expand into the booming OTT video market, offering top quality entertainment riding over an existing broadband link rather than through traditional cable, satellite, terrestrial or IPTV networks. Users will be able to select from a range of VoD content through the network, which in the future will also be available on other devices such as Internet-enabled TV receivers and disc players. Adding OTT files to a network is not a trivial task. For one thing the amount of data is much greater than the normal user-group traffic - especially with HD material - and prone to glitches as it meanders across the Internet from a single server.
The answer is to use a content delivery network (CDN), which comprises a cluster of ‘edge’ servers to deliver copies taken from the original (‘origin’) server from a point closer to the consumer. When a customer orders content from the on-demand platform, the request is directed to the nearest edge server in the network. The result is a dramatic reduction in delivery costs, higher download speeds, improved streaming quality and a more reliable connection. This is complemented by the use of adaptive streaming (as opposed to progressive download), which enables to tune quality to bandwidth actually available at a particular user.
With premium OTT VoD material, a content protection system is obviously essential as its potentially high commercial value presents an irresistibly tempting target for pirates. The weapon of choice is watermarking, given that it provides a unique ID capable of surviving common forms of video processing and even camcorder copying from the screen. This unique identifier is generally linked to a unique stream, so that retrieving the watermark will refer to the user responsible for the illegal copy. The tricky part is to successfully deploy this over a CDN - which is where Civolution can help. In B2B applications, watermarking required significant system resources, with processing speeds at near real-time or marginally higher than real-time. What was needed for B2C applications of forensic watermarking was something making scarce use of system resources, and above all having no effect on the user experience.
To solve this technical issue Civolution developed a powerful solution called NexGuard - PayTV & Online, which allows the watermarking
of content to be deployed within a CDN environment. It does this by splitting the watermarking process into two parts - pre- processing and smart embedding. The pre-processing stage processes the HD input video into an intermediate file, which contains all the information necessary to apply a unique identifier rapidly and efficiently to the file at the step called smart-embedding. While this pre-processing is typically resource-intensive, it is only executed for each video or audio asset once. These files are distributed throughout the CDN along with the content.
The smart embedding is the part that actually applies the unique identifier to the content. As the content was already pre-processed, this operation requires extremely low calculation power, which makes integration with the CDN architectures possible. Once the edge server receives a request for download or streaming of a piece of content, the pre-processed file is watermarked by the smart embedder, with a unique identifier.
Of course, before anything is delivered the system first needs to check that the prospective user is a bona fide subscriber, or has paid an additional fee for pay-per-view content for instance. This calls for a digital rights management system, with encryption applied in one of two ways - either before the content is ingested into the CDN (‘pre-encryption’), or at the point of downloading or streaming (‘on-the- fly’). Pre-encryption is usually the most popular for CDN VoD systems, as the process occurs only once so no resources are called upon during download or streaming, while on-the-fly encryption tends to be used on the VoD servers of cable TV operators. Fortunately, the NexGuard - PayTV & Online technology is compliant with both, being able to smart embed clear or encrypted content without having to decrypt. Clearly consumers are demanding more content across a wider range of devices than ever before, and are willing to pay for consistently high quality premium material from a reputable source. With a comprehensive content protection scheme in place, rights owners, distributors and broadcasters will be able to deliver a genuine choice in both content and viewing platform to the benefit of all - except for those unscrupulous pirates seeking to undermine a new and exciting chapter in television and audio media.
www.ibeweb.com l january/february 2011 l ibe l 31
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