DASH-IF announces Public Community Review and Public Special Session on Watermarking support
On March 23rd, 2022, DASH-IF published the DASH-IF IOP Watermarking specification is available here (pdf) for community review.
This document is about so-called A/B watermarking techniques for ABR content where a series of A and B variants of segments are consumed by devices. It introduces an end-to-end architecture supporting service-side forensic watermarking when delivered on an OTT system. It defines:
- a format for a token carrying a series of A/B decision unique for every device. This token is used at the edge for delivering the right variant.
- Metadata and mechanisms for carrying this metadata from a transcoder to the edge. This is used for synchronizing the series on the same timeline for all devices
- It supports any forensic watermarking technique, any encoder and any CDN.
This is the result of the work in the Content Protection and Security task force in DASH-IF lead by Laurent Piron from NAGRA and has been done in collaboration between watermarking technology providers (NAGRA, Synamedia, Irdeto, Verimatrix), CDN providers (Akamai, AWS) and other DASH-IF members.
The community review is open until May 31st, 2022. Publication is expected by August 31, 2022. Comments may be submitted through the github.
In order to support the Community Review, DASH-IF will host a public special session that introduces the technology on April 13, 2022 at 6pm cest/9am pdt. If you are interested, please find the logistical details here.