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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."
Not even a frickin' press release.
Is somebody just trying to generate a few cheap click-throughs? A few unique hits?
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
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!
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
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
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.
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.
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.