We’re serious about security at SproutVideo, which is why we are excited to announce a new way to protect your hosted videos. Dynamic watermarking is an effective deterrent against screen recording and unauthorized distribution of your high-value video content.
Our new dynamic watermarks will display the viewer’s email address, IP Address, and Session ID over your video and constantly change position every 20 seconds, making it nearly impossible to crop out of a screen recording.
What is Watermarking?
Watermarking is the process of overlaying an image or text over a piece of content to identify the content’s owner, authorized user, or validity. There are various methods for watermarking different kinds of content; we’ll focus on static and dynamic watermarking of videos today. We are SproutVideo, after all. A static watermark is a watermark that is the same for all viewers. In contrast, dynamic watermarks can change based on various factors, such as where the video is played or who is watching it.
Static Watermarking
Static watermarking adds a visible mark on a video. It’s a great way to brand content and deter theft. When used for branding purposes, these watermarks can commonly be seen on videos or photographs as a logo, name, or phrase that typically appears along the edges, so they aren’t too distracting. The creators of a television show may watermark a video clip or GIF on social media to grow brand awareness. When attempting to deter theft, a content creator might have the static watermark cover the entire photograph or video. Even if someone were to download or screenshot the content, the watermark would still be present so everyone would know who created the content. Static watermarks are easy to incorporate since they only have to be added once, and can be done before uploading to a video hosting platform.
Dynamic Watermarking
Dynamic watermarks, on the other hand, change from viewer to viewer based on different factors. For instance, a video could have a different watermark based on what site it’s been embedded in, or each video viewer might get a unique watermark that identifies them. While dynamic watermarks don’t prevent screen recording, they can be excellent at discouraging viewers from recording and redistributing content because their personal information is burned in and can easily be traced back to them.
You’ll generally want to use dynamic watermarking on content intended for a narrow audience, such as quarterly reports, employee training videos, or content containing intellectual property or trade secrets.
Dynamic Watermarking on SproutVideo: Flexible and Secure
By sharing personal details like the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID, our dynamic watermarking feature provides a strong theft deterrent. If a viewer chooses to pirate your content and share it without your consent, their personal information will also be shared. Changing the placement of the dynamic watermark throughout the video adds another layer of protection, making it extremely cumbersome for any screen recorder to crop out or conceal without needing to display the watermark over the entire surface area of the content.
Our platform also gives you the flexibility to enable dynamic watermarks for all of your videos account-wide, on a per-video basis, or per viewer login access grant. This feature offers a more responsive way to watermark content, making it an excellent option that can adapt to your needs.
