Today's Spotlight Applications address digital watermarking and steganography ("hidden writing"). Assigned to Nielsen, the first application discloses techniques for using steganographically-encoded time information as basis to establish a time offset. Assigned to Cmt Research (ZA), the second application discloses a digital watermarking techniques for embedding information in and extracting information from content items, such as video signals.
20210266617, "Use of steganographically-encoded time information as basis to establish a time offset, to facilitate taking content-related action," assigned to The Nielsen Company.
Abstract
A method and system for using steganographically-encoded time information as a basis to control when a client carries out a content-related action. The client processes for presentation one or more linear media streams, each defining a respective time sequence of frames of media content, and at least one of the streams being steganographically encoded with at least one watermark at a respective time-point within the linear media stream, the watermark encoding a timestamp of the respective time-point within the linear media stream according to a server clock. The client extracts the timestamp from the watermark and computes a time offset based on a difference between the extracted timestamp and a current time according to a client clock. And the client uses the computed time offset as a basis to determine when the client should carry out a content-related action in a given one of the one or more linear media streams.
20210295462, "Digital watermarking system and method," assigned to Cmt Research (pty) Ltd (ZA)
Abstract
A digital watermarking system and method for embedding information in and extracting information from content items, such as video signals, are described. In a method for encoding or embedding information in a content item, a content item including a plurality of frames is accessed in which each of a number of elements within the frames is associated with an inter-frame difference measure representing changes in the element between two frames. Information for embedding in the content item is accessed. Symbols of the information are embedded in the content item by manipulating the inter-frame difference measure of a selected element through a number of frames using an algorithm and the information. The information is used by the algorithm to control the manipulation. The manipulated content item is output as a watermarked content item having the information embedded therein.
