Performance measurements of a real-time digital watermarking system for broadcast monitoring

At present it is very easy to distribute and copy multimedia content. Digital watermarking is a technical solution to the copyright problem. In its basic form a digital watermark is a small signal added to a multimedia asset and carrying sufficient data to provide IPR (Intellectual Properly Right) protection. In the European Esprit project VIVA (Visual Identity Verification Auditor) this digital watermarking technology is used to investigate, design and demonstrate a professional broadcast surveillance system. A real-time digital watermark embedder and detector for broadcast monitoring are implemented in software on a powerful DSP (digital signal processor). In this paper a short overview of the watermarking algorithms and their implementation is given. Measurements are done in a laboratory environment under real-time conditions and are very convincing. The experimental results reveal that the watermark can survive much common processing in the broadcast chain.