[OT] Individual DVD Watermarking Software

Is there Mac software that can add individual watermarks to a DVD video so that I can monitor the distribution of my DVD screeners? Meaning each DVD would have a watermark of the person's name that I send the screener out to. The only method I currently know is to watermark in FCP and then create individual DVD disc .ISO files, which would take forever to encode for each individual's DVD. I'm assuming the Academy has a solution as I've heard they have methods to track their Oscar screeners. If not available, I hope that someone would create this software. Any info would be most appreciated!

Thanks,
Alexander

The Academy uses (or at least has used) watermarking technology from Civolution. I think they use a hardware device to embed a forensic watermark ? that is, something that's invisible but detectable after the fact ? as dubs are made. I've read that their tech has been licensed by companies that make dedicated format-conversion and duplication products.

But that's a ridiculous level of overkill for you. Besides which, these solutions are specifically not what you'd want, since their purpose is to invisibly mark content for later recovery.

If you want to throw a personalized watermark on the screen (instead of a generic "property of" or whatever), then yeah, you're going to have to mark and encode each screener individually. You can automate some of this with Compressor, obviously, but you'll still have to encode each copy separately.

A better option might be to mark only the first reel of each screener. That way you'd have to encode separate copies of the first reel, but the rest of the film would remain the same. Just put the watermarked, personalized first reel as the first chapter on your DVD, then the rest of the film as the second-through-end chapters. Or you can get fancy and mark the second and fifth reels, whatever.

Mind elaborating on this: "put the watermarked, personalized first reel as the first chapter on your DVD, then the rest of the film as the second-through-end chapters." Can you interchange the first chapter on DVD's easily? Apologies as I'm a newbie. Thanks.

I don't really do DVDs that often, so no, I'm afraid I can't elaborate very much. I was operating under the assumption that each track can be composed of multiple video/audio assets, and that chapter breaks could be put between them. I've never done this, it was just an idea.

Someone like Graeme Nattress, Spherico or Apple for that matter should create a DVD Studio Pro plugin. Any other ideas guys?

hey, alex.

i guess you could add a subtitle in DVDSP,
but i'm not sure there's any way to FORCE that to stay on the screen,
also it would be easy enough to strip out of dubs, is my guess.

this really has to be BURNT IN to the entire film.

doing it in Compressor is simpler than FCP.
i used to have to do this all the time when i was making DVDs for the studio film i worked on awhile back

one export from FCP,
drop it into Compressor, add a bunch of DVD presets,
and in each one add a different watermark in the Filters pane of the Inspector.
in fact, i had to do this quite regularly, so we had saved compressor settings with the watermarks already set.

we didn't have photoshop on that film
so we made our watermarks in FCP, using a few layers of the simple text generator.
export it from the timeline as a TIFF.


nick

As usual Nick has great solutions. I will try this. Thank you again Nick!

Alternatively, you can also create a droplet with the preset. Makes it a drag and drop operation (hey, what are Macs for anyway?).



www.strypesinpost.com

Maybe try the Force Display for a subtitle in DVDSP. But I don't know whether this option can be switched off by the user later.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

yeah the Force Subtitle option is the best way to go. Add a sub-title track and in the Inspector, you will see a check box for it. You can also have them fade in and out which is nice.

The only problem is that it is not 100% effective. It will work for standard DVD players but anyone with some computer skills and DVD ripping software can pull out the m2v file sans the subtitle overlay. So it's up to you...