Independent video software provider Synamedia has acquired ContentArmor, a privately held developer of forensic watermarking solutions for the media and entertainment industry.
The acquisition extends Synamedia’s reach into new markets including in-flight entertainment (IFE) boosting Synamedia’s anti-piracy capabilities for movie studios and sports rightsholders, across both OTT and direct-to-consumer (D2C) services.
ContentArmor has been working alongside long-term partner, castLabs, on a custom IFE integration as part of their partnership to fight against video piracy.
By combining Video Toolkit and server-side watermarking, castLabs and ContentArmor have developed a session-based forensic watermarking solution that works directly on the encrypted content without breaking the secure data path. Studios increasingly require enhanced content security measures and this solution allows to identify theft sources down to the user account level. Watermarking adds another significant layer of protection for digital media by embedding unique invisible information into streams which cannot be removed, regardless of distortions or alterations being made to content.
For this specific integration, the watermark is applied on the fly when the player requests segments of content. It does not require any additional storage capacity to distribute 4K movies on integrated aircrafts’ private screens with limited capacity.
In addition, by adding ContentArmor’s technology, patents and expertise to its broad portfolio of security offerings, including its Synamedia EverGuard anti-piracy services, Synamedia is now uniquely placed to meet video service providers’ edge and 5G security demands.
Edge watermarking is the most effective, secure and scalable approach for detecting and disrupting content leaks, and Synamedia anticipates a substantial market opportunity for it, particularly to stream premium content over 5G. ContentArmor’s innovative edge watermarking technology reduces storage and CDN bandwidth requirements by eliminating the need to duplicate video streams. It improves cache performance and speeds the process of embedding the watermarks, while reducing risk by performing security-critical operations in the network rather than in the client.
ContentArmor’s forensic watermarking complies with the MovieLabs Enhanced Content Protection specification for premium VOD and UHD/4K and is already in use protecting studios’ movies by identifying the source of any unauthorised content distribution.
Alain Durand, ContentArmor CEO, commented: “While head-end watermarking is now at the heart of any studio or service provider’s security requirements, we are primed for the future with our edge watermarking solution. By combining our high-performance technology with Synamedia’s unparalleled intelligence-led security offerings, service providers can future-proof their revenues from the menace of piracy.”
Paul Segre, Synamedia CEO, added: “ContentArmor’s expertise and investment in R&D has resulted in more than 30% growth year-on-year since its inception, along with an impressive patent portfolio. This acquisition further accelerates our industry-leading security business, with edge watermarking fuelling new opportunities in the D2C streaming space and for 5G. In the security domain, our clear objective is to meet the needs of all video service providers that care about anti-piracy. The acquisition of ContentArmor strengthens that proposition.”
