But if someone steals your content, “brand awareness” isn’t a worthy consolation prize. 

What if you could proactively protect your content from being stolen? Better still, what if you could determine who stole your content thanks to its video watermark? 

Enter dynamic watermarking. An alternative video watermarking solution, dynamic watermarks change based on the viewer, generally displaying personal information as a theft deterrent while moving intermittently around the screen. The regular movement of the watermark makes it nearly impossible to remove. 

No matter what solution is ideal for your content, this guide on video watermarking will help. Discover how to watermark videos and why it’s important, plus check out examples to decide which type of watermark is best for your business. 

What is a Watermark for Video & What Does It Mean?

Companies and creators add watermarks to online intellectual property — such as videos, photos, and documents like PDFs — that need to be protected.

Generally speaking, a video watermark is either a:

• Static brand logo indicating the content owner, or
• Dynamic semi-transparent text identifying the viewer’s email and IP address

Static watermarks indicate ownership and establish brand authority. Dynamic watermarks help prevent content from being stolen and misappropriated. 

For these reasons, video watermarks act as a security measure. You can add watermarks to videos during editing, post-production, or after uploading your asset to a video hosting platform. 

We’ll discuss the use cases for each type of video watermark in more detail later. 

Do Watermarks Indicate Copyright?

Watermarking a video does not copyright the content. But it doesn’t need to! You gain copyright in a creative work when it is written or recorded. Register creative works through the U.S. Copyright Office if you might need to defend your property in court. The most proactive way to protect your video assets is to prevent the content from being stolen in the first place. 

What is the Purpose of a Video Watermark? 

Brand awareness and theft prevention are the main reasons to add a watermark to your videos. The level of security a watermark provides depends on the type of watermark used. 

Static watermarks (i.e., brand logos) are less secure than dynamic watermarks, which intermittently display viewer information on-screen. However, businesses and creators need different levels of protection. Let’s consider the two major use cases for video watermarks. 

Watermarking for Brand Awareness & Content Reach

The most basic watermark is a static image in the form of a brand logo or creator name. Static watermarks are the same for every viewer. This watermark ensures your business receives credit, helping to build topic authority and brand awareness when your content is shared.

Static Logo Watermark

Static watermarks are generally placed in the bottom left or right corner of the video. However, this placement makes static watermarks fairly easy to remove or crop out if a thief wants to pass the content off as their own. New AI tools to remove watermarks only make this easier. 

One solution to discourage unauthorized use is covering the center or entire video with a semi-transparent watermark. Stock image and video libraries commonly use this method.

Edge-to-Edge Static Logo Watermark

However, this doesn’t prevent AI from removing the watermark. Plus, videos covered with a semi-transparent watermark are difficult or unpleasant to watch. 

Therefore, static watermarks are useful for brand awareness and content reach, as most people won’t remove a watermark before sharing your content. However, static watermarks aren’t sufficient for protecting intellectual property.

Watermarking for Copyright and Intellectual Property Protection

The risks associated with misappropriated intellectual property, proprietary information, and corporate data can affect a business’s bottom line. Leaked internal videos, for example, risk exposing private information or unrevealed products. 

Likewise, e-learning course creators must protect their intellectual property from being screencast and shared without permission. To this end, dynamic watermarking is a secure solution to prevent viewers from leaking your content or passing it off as their own. 

Dynamic Watermark on SproutVideo

A dynamic watermark displays different content based on predefined criteria about the viewer; it moves intermittently around the screen to prevent unauthorized use. 

Dynamic watermarks on the SproutVideo platform display the viewer’s personal information (email address, IP address, and session ID) on the screen. Viewers are dissuaded from stealing video content because it would require them to publicly share their personal information as well. 

Additionally, dynamic watermarking creates a trail of breadcrumbs, allowing you to identify the culprit and prevent future access.

Across options, dynamic watermarks strike a balance to provide optimal security while maintaining a high-quality viewer experience. You can even customize dynamic watermarks with SproutVideo: choose a more transparent watermark, prevent it from sticking to the center of the screen, adjust the intermittent pattern, and more.  

Read More: 4 Ways to Customize Dynamic Watermarking on a Video

When Should I Add a Watermark to My Videos?

Consider the security you need across internal and external channels when determining what type of watermark to add to your videos. For each channel below, consider the risks of video asset distribution without your permission.

• Social Media: sometimes necessary. Some platforms (Instagram and TikTok) automatically add a watermark to videos. Therefore, adding your own is unnecessary. An exception is long-form YouTube videos, where it is standard to include a small watermark in the lower corner.
• Marketing Website: unnecessary. Marketing and product-focused videos generally don’t need a watermark. Often, the company is directly mentioned in the video, meaning brand recognition is built-in. These videos build awareness even if stolen and shared. 
• Educational Content: sometimes necessary. Educational videos are a great way for brands to provide value to relevant audiences. As public-facing videos, a static watermark is sufficient for building brand awareness and topic authority. However, private content, such as login-protected videos, gain added protection with dynamic watermarks.
• Paywalled Videos: always necessary. Dynamic watermarks are the most secure way to protect paywalled video guides, e-learning courses, and other privately available content. Dynamic watermarks discourage screencasting theft by displaying the viewer’s personal information. Additionally, it creates a breadcrumb trail, allowing you to block an individual viewer’s access if necessary.
• Internal Corporate Communications: always necessary. Highly sensitive and confidential quarterly data reports, pre-released product demonstrations, and company meetings represent the internal communications that require safeguarding. Internal communications are vulnerable to internal leaks, just as paywalled content is vulnerable to external ones. For the same reasons, dynamic watermarking is ideal for securing this private information.
• Film, Television, and Advertisement Screening: always necessary. Confidential prelease information is shared with popular media outlets, journalists, and content creators before debuting a new product, commercial, or television show. Dynamic watermarking ensures external collaboration and screenings are private and secure. 

Read More: Best Practices for Securely Sharing Corporate Videos

3 Ways to Add Watermarks to Videos

Add static watermarks to videos during editing or with a third-party tool. Adding dynamic watermarks requires a video hosting service because the watermark must be encoded in real-time to display the viewer’s information. 

1. Dynamic Watermarking with SproutVideo

Dynamic watermarking can be turned on account-wide or on a video-to-video basis. 

However, dynamic watermarks require real-time encoding and processing to display the viewer’s information as a watermark. For this reason, viewer information must be captured or applied in one of the following ways to enable dynamic watermarking:  

• Login Protection: Perfect for securing one-off videos and hosted video websites
• Lead Capture: Ideal for gating promotional marketing and educational assets
• Embed Code Parameters: Necessary for membership websites and advanced viewer tracking

The method of implementation you choose will depend on how you share your videos and when you need dynamic watermarking to appear, as outlined by the use cases listed above. 

Lead capture is the least secure of these options because users can enter false information, meaning the dynamic watermark would display the false information entered.

Note: For added security, consider using signed embed codes to prevent embed code tampering and reuse. 

That’s it! Once you’ve enabled one of these three methods for capturing or applying viewer information, enabling Dynamic Watermark is a simple click of the toggle button. 

Read More: How to Enable Dynamic Watermarking

2. Static Watermark in Post-Production

Ensure your static watermark cannot be removed by adding it in post-production while editing. The watermark will become part of the video file when you export your video. Keep in mind that cropping a video or using AI tools can remove a static watermark.

Here are the general steps:

1. Create your static watermark image with a transparent background (PNG).
2. Import the image into your video editor. 
3. Add the image to your video timeline, then adjust the logo’s size, placement, and opacity. 
4. When your video is complete, export and share!

This method is the easiest way to add a static watermark to your videos if you created the video or are familiar with editing software. However, you may prefer a watermarking tool for existing videos. We’ll cover these next. 

3. Static Watermark with Third-Party Application

Third-party applications allow you to add a watermark to existing videos. However, the video must be uploaded to the third-party platform to add the watermark. 

Many applications allow you to add a watermark for free but restrict the upload size, video resolution, and overlay the tool’s branded watermark. Compare the best apps for watermarking videos based on each platform’s free plan. 

• Descript: Viable free option if you need to add a static watermark to a single video. 
• Canva: Free tool for adding watermarks to images and documents, but not ideal for larger videos due to the limited upload size (1GB). 
• Kapwing: You can get started without creating an account; however, the free plan limits video quality, size, and length.

Note: Some video hosts can add a watermark to the video player. However, without additional security measures, thieves can still fetch and download the content. Worse, there’s no watermark on the downloaded file since it was part of the video player instead of the video file. Therefore, choose a tool that adds the static watermark to your video file. That way, your watermark will follow no matter where your content goes.

Fighting copyright and intellectual property infringement is a long and costly endeavor best avoided with prevention. While video watermarking serves multiple purposes, the end goal for most users is to protect their content from unwanted distribution. Check out our library of helpful content to make a plan for keeping your videos protected:

• Determine the Level of Privacy Your Videos Require
• 8 Powerful Reasons to Use Viewer Logins For Your Videos
• What To Do If Someone Steals Your Videos Online

The post What is a Watermark for Video? Automatic Theft Prevention for Videos appeared first on SproutVideo.

Companies use video to easily share internal announcements, coordinate projects, onboard team members, and train new employees. From small businesses to large corporations, video enables teams to stay informed and coordinated. 

Yet businesses need the ability to share videos privately. Security is essential for numerous video applications, from proprietary information and trade secrets to upcoming projects and marketing videos. 

So, understandably, businesses are concerned about the privacy and security of the videos they share. Secure video sharing, unlike social media platforms, puts you in control of your content.

Top-notch private corporate video features include password protection, video login, and signed embed codes. We’ll cover six easy steps to securely share videos as a business in this complete guide.

The Importance of Sharing Corporate Video Privately

Video security and privacy is essential for maintaining the boundary between external and internal video content. External videos are used in marketing campaigns, landing pages, social media, and more. 

Internal videos, on the other hand, are almost always intended for a specific group within the company. This group might be the executive team, a specific company location, new hires, freelancers, or anyone who needs secure access to your company’s videos. 

A video hosting platform focused on secure video sharing for businesses will include password protection, dynamic watermarking, single sign-on, and viewer tracking features.

The Three Pillars of Secure Video Sharing

The difficulty in keeping video content secure is due to the multiple access points and potential privacy leaks. Therefore, your video security plan must address the following pillars.

Control Access

There are two access points at which you need to restrict access:

• Videos: Directly restrict access with password protection, login protection, IP address and location restriction, and single sign-on.
• Video Hosting Account: Use two-factor authentication (2FA) for all account logins to secure access to your video hosting account.

Prevent Leaks & Theft 

This level of video security seeks to prevent those with legitimate access to videos from leaking or sharing content outside the organization.

• Secure Embed Codes: Prevent embed code redistribution with allowed domains or signed embed codes. 
• Deter Theft: Dissuade screen recording by displaying the viewer’s information on-screen.

Audit Regularly

Regular auditing is essential. It will allow you to ensure unauthorized people haven’t gained access to video content and that those with access permission haven’t changed video privacy settings.

• Engagement Metrics: Real-time information on who is watching your videos and for how long.
• Viewer Access Logs: Track login behavior for login-protected videos.
• Account Audit Logs: Keep track of team member account activity.

This information should allow you to consider video security and how you might implement it for your business or organization. We’ll discuss how to implement this information for secure video sharing next.

How to Secure Video Content in 6 Steps

1. Determine the Level of Security You Require

The video security demands of every company will be unique because no two companies require exactly the same features. Use the following questions to determine the types of security and privacy features your business needs.

• How sensitive is the video content? How would your business be impacted if these videos leaked? 
• Do you already have a website where you can embed these videos, or do you need a secure portal for your videos as well?
• Should viewers be able to access your videos seamlessly? Should videos be password protected or require login?
• Where do viewers need to access the video? Do viewers need access on the go or should access be restricted to certain locations, like the office?  
• Who should have access to these videos at your company? Should videos be restricted to specific teams or locations?

The answers to these questions will largely determine the features you need to look for when shopping for a video hosting provider.

2. Choose Your Video Hosting Platform Wisely

Online video hosting services are not one-size-fits-all solutions.

Popular free options, like YouTube and TikTok, are designed for social sharing — the opposite of what you need for private, corporate video. A video hosting platform that focuses on video for business will offer greater control over your content.

Review the essential features of a secure video platform below, then make a list of the solutions your business needs. All of the following features are found on the SproutVideo platform.

Important Features of a Secure Video Platform:

• Two-Factor Authentication: Enable double account verification for login. 
• Password Protected Video: Require a password to access video content.
• Secure Video Login: Create login credentials that are required to view videos.
• Signed Embed Codes: Prevent embed code theft. Once expired, the video can no longer play where embedded. 
• Whitelist Access to Content: Control what IP addresses, domains, and geographic locations have access to your content. 
• Single Sign-On (SSO): User authentication with one set of credentials. Connect your hosted video website (such as SproutVideo) with your Identity Provider.
• Dynamic Watermarking: Display the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID on the video to deter theft.
• Account Audit Log: Review team members’ changes to videos and privacy settings.
• Viewer Access Log: Track individual viewer engagement; see who accessed your videos and how much they watched.

3. Restrict Video Access 

There are two levels of restricting video access:

• Restrict access using credentials
• Restrict access by location or network

Restrict Access to the Video

Your approach to restricting video access will depend on how you plan to share your video content.

• On your own website, including an intranet, Sharepoint, Squarespace, WordPress, etc. 
• Video website via a video hosting service, like SproutVideo.
• A third-party location, like Notion, Confluence, or Asana. 

If you plan to share videos on your website: does your website portal include page access controls?

If yes, manage your employees’ access credentials or profiles from your company’s content-sharing portal. This will create a more seamless viewing experience.

Additionally, consider whether those access controls are sufficient: will you require additional security measures for more granular access permissions? Combine additional restriction features such as:

• Login protection
• Password protection

Need a website for your videos? Hosted video websites provide a dedicated portal for your content.

Use login protection and password prediction to restrict access. Or, for serious security with a high-quality user experience, bring your Identity Provider and use single sign-on (SSO) with our hosted video websites.

Restrict Access by Location or Network

Once you have restricted access to videos directly, consider whether or not you need additional restrictions. For example, your website may require log in credentials. But anyone could still access the content if those credentials were shared outside the company. 

To prevent this from happening, use IP address and geographic location restrictions. Doing so ensures that no one outside your organization can access the content even if they have the password or login credentials to load the page or video. 

Example: A company might whitelist its computer network and the IP addresses of any remote employees. Computers outside those networks will be blocked from loading videos or live streams.

4. Deter Screen Recording & Downloads

How do you protect video content once someone has access? Deter screen recording and download theft with dynamic watermarking. The watermark changes positions regularly and displays the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID.  

There are multiple ways to customize a dynamic watermark on the SproutVideo platform. You can alter the opacity of the background, select the position change interval, prevent the watermark from covering center-focused content, and more.

Example: A video embedded on a landing page intended for new employees could include password protection, dynamic watermarking, and IP address restriction. This stack of security measures ensures the viewer must have a password to watch, the watermark deters recording by revealing the viewer’s information on-screen, and only whitelisted networks of computers will be able to play the video.

5. Safeguard Embed Codes

Unless preventative measures are in place, it is relatively easy to locate an embed code on a webpage to copy and paste it on another site. There are two major ways to prevent this:

• Domain restriction automatically checks the URL where your embed code is located to ensure it’s approved. The video won’t load if it isn’t approved. 
• Signed embed codes require a unique signing key to play the video. The video won’t load if the signing key is absent or incorrect.

While more technically advanced, signed embed codes can be used in more complex scenarios than allowed domains.

6. Track Viewer Activity

The final step is to audit your viewer records and account access logs on a regular basis. This will ensure your video privacy controls are continuing to work as expected.

Video hosting platforms with robust analytics, like SproutVideo, make it easy to periodically review who has been accessing your videos.

Firstly, tag viewers who have permission to watch the video. This will make it easy to identify them. Viewers accessing the video through login protection or single sign-on (SSO) are automatically tracked.

Regularly review your access log to check for anomalies. Look for unusual email addresses, locations, IP addresses, or viewing patterns. If anything sticks out, temporarily revoke viewer access by changing the video password, privacy settings, or removing it from the page.

Note: In addition to engagement tracking, periodically review account audit logs. This information shows what team members have uploaded videos, edited privacy settings, and more.

As a communications solution, securely sharing video is easy, effective, and can potentially increase your company’s bottom line. Yet to be beneficial, strong video security and privacy are essential.

A video hosting platform built for businesses, like SproutVideo, includes everything you need to securely share video, monitor users, and improve viewer engagement. 

The post Best Practices to Securely Share Corporate Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

We’re serious about security at SproutVideo, which is why we are excited to announce a new way to protect your hosted videos with dynamic watermarking for videos. 

A dynamic watermark displays the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID over your video and continuously changes position. This makes it nearly impossible to crop out of a screen recording. You can also customize the opacity of the watermark, restrict its position, and more.

What is Dynamic Watermarking?

Watermarking, in general, 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. Dynamic watermarks 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, for example, 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; therefore, 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.

4 Ways to Customize Dynamic Watermarking on a Video

Dynamic watermarks offer superior security to static watermarks. While static watermarks can easily be cropped out, dynamic watermarks are difficult to hide and reveal the thief’s personal information.

However, to minimize its prominence while providing security, the SproutVideo platform allows you to customize the dynamic watermark on your videos. 

Background Transparency

Set the watermark’s background to be more or less transparent. We recommend a “semi-transparent” watermark for a balance of readability and strong security. The more opaque the watermark background, the more prominently it is featured. 

Position Change Time

By default, the dynamic watermark changes positions on a timed interval to prevent thieves from being able to crop out one section of the image in order to avoid being identified. 

We recommend a 20-second interval. This provides strict anti-theft protection without being distracting to the viewer. Available options include 10-second and 30-second intervals as well. 

Intermittent Visibility

This feature allows you to display the watermark intermittently. The watermark will display every other interval, meaning the watermark is hidden for roughly half the video. 

The frequency of interval change corresponds to the position change time you’ve selected for watermarks. Keep in mind that enabling this setting makes it easier to grab screen captures. 

Restricted Positioning

The placement of the dynamic watermark is random by default. Restricted Positioning prevents the watermark from displaying at the center of the video, which is generally the main focus of the video content.

When this setting is enabled, the watermark will stick to the edges of the video as much as possible. Once again, remember that this creates less variability in the watermark placement, making it easier to crop the watermark out.

Dynamic Watermarking for Videos with SproutVideo

Our dynamic watermarking feature provides a strong theft deterrent by sharing personal details like the viewer’s email address, IP address, and session ID. 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 — making it an excellent option that can adapt to your needs. 

Dynamic watermarking is an essential tool for preventing video content from being stolen and redistributed. It is ideal for protecting intellectual property and keeping trade secrets, well, secret.

Ready to get started? 

• Try it out completely free with a 30-day trial to the platform.
• Learn how to set up dynamic watermarking on SproutVideo. 
• Discover the best practices for sharing private videos.

The post Product Update: Dynamic Watermarks for Videos appeared first on SproutVideo.