Mpeg 7 To Include Per-Frame Content Identification

An anonymous reader writes "NEC has announced that its video content identification technology has been incorporated in the upcoming Mpeg 7 video standard, allowing for each video frame to have its own signature, meaning that even minute changes to the file such as adding subtitles, watermarks or dogtags, and of course cutting out adverts, will alter the overall signature of the video. According to NEC this will allow the owners of the video to automatically 'detect illegal copies' and 'prevent illegal upload of video content' without their consent. NEC also claims that its technology will do away with the current manual checking by members of the movie industry and ISPs to spot dodgy videos."

Comments

The linked article links nowhere.

[bersl2]

Not even a frickin' press release.

Is somebody just trying to generate a few cheap click-throughs? A few unique hits?

How it works

[scdeimos]

For the technically curious, there's a high-level overview of the technology in an NEC media release here:

http://www.nec.com.au/News-Media/Media-Centre/Media-Releases/NEC-Develops-Video-Content-Identification-Technology-that-Detects-Illegal-Video-Copies-on-the-Internet-in-a-Matter-of-Seconds.html

Re:How it works

[Rufus211]

Thanks for the link. That press release is surprisingly technical makes it clear that this has nothing to do with a successor to the MPEG4 codec / container format. It relates to:

*2) MPEG-7 Video signature tools:
This is an amendment to MPEG-7 Visual, a standard for content description interface for multimedia content that has been established as an international standard for identification technology of video content, as ISO/IEC 15938-3/Amd.4.

There currently exist handful of different techniques for creating small signatures (76 bytes in this case) of a video frame. Content companies create sequences of signatures for all their videos and distribute the sequences. Youtube can then create a sequence of signatures for an uploaded file, compare it against all known sequences, and then do whatever with that knowledge.

The MPEG group is just standardizing on one particular technique for creating the signatures, distributing them, and comparing them. In that case this is something sensable for the MPEG group to do, and isn't really good or evil.

Re:The opposite effect?

[timmarhy]

this was my first thought as well, you could just create an app to change a single pixel on each frame to a slightly different shade. hell even just re encoding it will change it.

plus can you imagine the processing power that would be needed to check each frame in every movie being bit torrented? yes yes, i can see now this will definately stop those pirates.....

Re:First of all....

[squidinkcalligraphy]

MPEG-7 is a metadata standard for multimedia. It is not involved in the actual encoding of the content (like mpeg 1, 2 and 4 are). Basically it attaches a chunk of xml to a timecode. Look up wikipedia if you want to know more.

There also exists an MPEG-21, for those interested.

Some actual info

[Anubis350]

I agree, a link to something like this or or this all of which came from a quick google and give some basic info on mpeg 7 and mention some content ID tech would be helpful as a real source of *something* on this new standard (that I just heard of today)! Damn it editors, do your jobs!

Terrible reporting

[91degrees]

Press release Let's see - 1000 hours of video = 3.6 million seconds = 108 million frames (30fps). Not 104 billion.

The signature is just 76 bytes. But a "home class PC" is 3GHz according a to a footnote. Perhaps the reporter could have read the original press release.

This stores the difference in luminance between subregions of frames. No idea why this needs to be encoded in the video itself. Seems that all a pirate needs to do is tweak things adequately so the signature changes. And I don't quite see how detecting changes is a feature. Surely you're trying to detect things remaining the same...

Re:Terrible reporting

[ElKry]

And that's what it's supposed to do.

If you read http://www.nec.com.au/News-Media/Media-Centre/Media-Releases/NEC-Develops-Video-Content-Identification-Technology-that-Detects-Illegal-Video-Copies-on-the-Internet-in-a-Matter-of-Seconds.html , you may notice that most people got this wrong, horribly wrong. This technology is aimed at accurately (they claim a 96% detection rate) detecting copies of the same video, whether they have been re-encoded, had subtitles added, or come from an analog source (cam, etc).

The fact they mention ISPs and video hosting means that what is at stake here is the claim that "it's too expensive / impossible / whatever" to filter a video uploaded to youtube, or to megavideo, or generally speaking sent via your friendly ISP. By (supposedly) defeating this claim, they expect to make companies accountable for what the users share on their websites / lines / etc, as it becomes computationally trivial (or so they claim) to identify it - hence the mention to the 3Ghz single core home PC, something no company can claim not to be able to afford.

I could have responded to any other slashdotter that got it wrong, but I chose you because of your last sentence, which I would have expected people would ask themselves before blindly believing anything they read. I know, I must be new here.

Re:First of all....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this is pretty hilarious, also your comment is a bit misinformed, but I don't really blame you for that, so here's the low down...

MPEG-7 is a content description standard - that is, it can be used with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (which includes h.264 quite notably...) to add metadata to the data streams.

Okay, so now we're talking about an NEC extension to MPEG-7 that they're trying to sell - even though MPEG-7 is largely unused right now. Also, notice I say unused now, implying the standard is done. That's because it is done. MPEG-7 isn't "going" to contain anything - it already exists! This is just an extension to it being proposed by someone who has a new patent and wants to get in the patent pool doubtless.

Okay, now to address your comment. MPEG has nothing to do with patents or licensing. MPEG = Motion Picture Experts Group, they help design and create video standards, and they're very intelligent people. The people you want to be mad at is MPEG-LA - no relation to MPEG whatsoever except their name. MPEG-LA creates patent pools for "essential" patents and then license them to implementors, distributors, and anyone who they can convince people needs them. MPEG-LA is pretty bad, but compared to some other patent people (look at Via's licensing for AAC...) they're not so bad - first 100,000 units sold don't have to pay royalties, any freely distributed videos don't have to pay royalties. Not saying they're good, but they're just not quite as bad as everyone else out there doing patent enforcement...

So please, don't blame the kind people a MPEG for MPEG-LA. Blame MPEG-LA themselves, http://mpegla.com/

Sincerely,
Your friendly codec developer/implementer

Re:I'm confused... or this is super sinister.

[Protoslo]

The truth seems to be a variation of #1: the writer at PC Authority didn't actually read the press release (alternative hypothesis: did read the release, and is not only innumerate but moderately mentally retarded), but rather made up speculative, mostly incorrect bullshit based on a blog reporting on a blog reporting on...a blog reporting on the actual press release. Like a fucked up internet game of telephone where the original source was there for the picking but still willfully ignored.

The secret sauce actually fingerprints video frames in a way that is invariant against most common alterations, including reencoding, analog capture, and hard-subs. Minor changes to the video...will leave the signature largely unaltered. No more manual checking (or keyword-search DMCA mailings?) for copyright violations.

Re:Keep going till you have no customers

[syousef]

I have news for you, it was your kids or kids just like yours who scratched and broke the DVDs. Parents allow children to handle DVDs then they bitch about how messed up the rentals are. If you want a perfect condition DVD for your kids to mess up buy it new.

Fuck you. My kids didn't scratch the DVDs and I don't let me kids scratch them. It is the responsibility of the video store to ensure the merchandise they are renting out is fit for purpose. Not mine and not my kids.

If they find that me or mine have damaged the fucking things they can make me pay for the damage, but to penalise me for other people causing damage is inexcusable and your pathetic attitude enables such arseholes to do whatever they like including rip people off and pass draconian laws.

Re:modest proposal

[andi75]

If you believe you have only the right to do the things worded in the unreadable legalese you have already successfully been brainwashed.

If you buy a movie, you get to watch/mutilate/ignore the movie. On your terms. The movie is protected by copyright, which is ment to govern *redistribution* of said movie (wholesale or in parts), and nothing else. What you're doing with it is 100% your choice.

Re:The opposite effect?

[omglolbah]

The Scene rar their releases because it is a convenient way to split them up into smaller chunks with easy to use quality checks.
FTP was the primary way to transfer the files and at the start of this use of ftp there was no "resume" if something happened during transfer you had to start over on the file.
That is a whole lot nicer when you just have to start over on a 14.3mb file as opposed to a 680mb file.

As a side note, when using rar to package the Scene releases it is against Scene rules to use compression which further strengthens the idea that it is done for packaging
and splitting of files with crc.