Forensic Watermarking is only available on Enterprise Accounts. Contact your Account Manager for more information.

Forensic Watermarking is the latest addition in high-security technology here at Frame.io, exclusively for our Enterprise customers. Forensic Watermarking acts as an additional level of protection for your video assets (along with Watermark ID, Static Watermark, and DRM) to identify which team member credentials were used to access any asset in a much more discreet way. This makes for a cleaner viewing experience while increasing the strength of security with your assets.

Unlike Watermark ID which shows the viewer’s session information on-screen, Forensic Watermarking captures equivalent information after the embedding/detection process, but is not visible to the viewer. Session and user identification are embedded in the video anytime the asset is played or downloaded. This will allow tracing a video playback session back to a user if further investigation is needed after an actual or suspected content leak. It is made to survive stream intercepting, recording of the display, unsecured video output, transcoding, image transforms and warps, re-edits, and other potential attacks on your asset.

​How to use it

Forensic Watermarking, much like Watermark ID, can be applied on the account and team levels and controlled per share links, depending on user role.

To access Forensic Watermarking on the account level, go to your settings and click on Account Settings. You will see a new section called Forensic Watermarking with three settings.

Require Forensic Watermarking can be toggled for anything viewed or downloaded in your account, or only to be applied on share links. You can set limits on who in your account will have the ability to view or download your video assets without it being turned on to affect only some of your users, or for no one to have the ability to turn it off in viewing, downloading, and sharing and make it a true requirement.

Forensic Watermarking Fallback is another setting that allows you to define if you want assets unsuitable for forensic watermarking to fallback to another playback mode, or to block playback. Fallback playback mode options are “Watermark-clear” (no forensic or Watermark ID as a result of the fallback operation), or Watermark ID (“WMID”).

Begin sharing from a Review or Presentation Link and click on the Watermarking tab. The toggle to turn Forensic Watermarking on for that specific share link should be available, based on roles defined in Account Settings specifying which roles can exclude disabling forensic watermarking.

Forensic watermarking requires you to enable it on the team level for internal viewing, as well as for the option to enable it on Share links, subject to the user roles defined. Turn on the toggle for whichever teams you want to have watermarking enabled.

Some considerations to keep in mind in enabling Forensic Watermarking for a team. Teams that have forensic watermarking enabled have the following tradeoffs with the added content security benefit:

1) Downloads are limited to forensically watermarked proxies, no option for Originals download

2) Some additional playback latency is experienced
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3) Video quality is slightly degraded since the content is encoded an additional cycle to embed the unique session-based forensic watermark.

If you come across an unauthorized copy of your asset, you must obtain a copy of the leaked file and work with NAGRA to retrieve the Forensic ID number. You then contact Frame Support and based on that Forensic ID number, we provide you information.

The most optimal way to get in touch with Frame.io Support is through the Support Portal in your Frame.io account or by contacting your Customer Success Manager (CSM). Click the ? icon and start a conversation with our support team. Select the SSO & Security category, followed by Forensic Watermarking Investigation Request and they will get in touch with you as soon as possible to help with your request.

For faster retrieval, it would also be helpful to provide the support representative with some optional information such as the name of the account housing that asset, the name of the project the asset came from, and if possible the asset ID of the clip you think the leak might have come from (available in the File Information tab of Frame.io).

Once the support representative has been able to obtain the session information corresponding to that file, you’ll be provided with the following information with which to facilitate your investigation:

Q: How do I begin an Investigation on my Forensic Watermarked media?

A: Contact our Support team after going through the detection process with NAGRA, our technology partner, and they will begin the process with you in recovering the session details and information. See the information above for more details.

Q: Do you have the ability to discover any leaked media?

A: Frame.io is not responsible for discovering leaked media.

Q: Can I use Forensic Watermarking on all my media?
​A: At this time, video assets encoded between 10 and 120 frames per second (fps) are supported, fixed frame rate, and resolution between 256 and 8192 for the width, and 144 and 8192 for the height, landscape or portrait (vertical) video orientations. Frame proxy files are forensically watermarked, not the Original files. Contact Frame.io Sales or Support if you have additional needs for forensic watermarking not covered by the current feature.

Q: Can I have Watermark ID and Forensic Watermarking turned on simultaneously?

A: Yes, you can increase the security on any assets you share if you wish. Both options will be available to switch on in your share options. Additionally, enabling DRM controls the usage directly, for example by disabling screen recordings on the viewing device and can be enabled for an account protecting an asset at the same time as forensic watermarking and/or watermark ID.

Q: How do I know a video has Forensic Watermarking applied as a viewer?

A: In the Frame.io web app, in the top-left corner of your viewer in internal team viewing, there will be a “Thumbprint” icon next to the video title. This will indicate that Forensic Watermarking is on. Additionally, a “generating forensic watermark” message in the video playback window (spinner) precedes any forensic watermarked session