Colorfront, NexGuard Team Up For Forensic Watermarking

Colorfront and NexGuard have joined forces to present the latest solution for the protection of digital content creation materials, particularly 4K/UHDTV and High Dynamic Range (HDR), in digital cinema, broadcast, Over-The-Top (OTT) internet entertainment and Video on Demand (VoD) applications.

Forensic watermarking is where a unique, invisible serial number can be added to video or audio content, and remains with the content, regardless of how it is transcoded, resized, downscaled or altered for distribution. Following the publication of the recent MovieLabs specifications for enhanced content protection, Hollywood studios are making forensic watermarking a key security requirement for any operator providing early release or UHD/4K and HDR content.

The partnership between the two companies utilises NexGuard's forensic watermarking with Colorfront's Transkoder and On-set Dailies products, enabling the protection for a range of dailies, mezzanine and master deliverables at all stages of the production and post production workflow. It also enables users to track the source of illicit B2B and B2C distribution, particularly 4K/UHDTV and HDR content.

Aron Jaszberenyi, Managing Director, Colorfront, said: "Colorfront's production, studio, broadcast and OTT customers, are taking a strong stand on security and are increasingly looking for new and better ways to protect their high-value content. NexGuard is a robust forensic watermarking solution which proved fast and easy to integrate technology into our Transkoder and On-Set Dailies products. Now, our customers can have the increased confidence in the security of their prized media assets with the most advanced forensic watermarking solution on the market – from dailies all the way to the latest UHDTV and HDR delivery formats for OTT services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. You can even watermark multiple outputs simultaneously with different payload IDs, delivering DNxHD MXF to editorial, H264 for PIX, and HD ProRes for marketing, all with unique payload IDs – and be able to identify which one ended up being pirated."

Harrie Tholen, Managing Director at NexGuard, added: "Content is at extremely high risk during the production and post-production process, which involves multiple players, often across continents. Piracy remains a core challenge for a lot of organizations, ranging from studios through to post-production companies and distributors. The joint Colorfront and NexGuard solution provides a readily accessible solution for studios that want to prevent illegal redistribution, which can be devastating for high value content such as UHD and HDR."

www.colorfront.com

www.nexguard.com

(JP/LM)