The Hindu Business Line : Real Image introduces ‘forensic water marking’ to check piracy of films

Chennai, March 28 Those pirated films, which eat away between a fourth and a seventh of the Rs 7,500 crore Indian film industry, are no longer the jumpy, grainy copies they used to be. The advent of the digital era in the industry has also helped those on the wrong side of the law and today’s pirated films are almost as good as the original.

Poised to grow

At a time when the industry is poised to grow from $1.8 billion in 2006 to around $5 billion by 2010, the growing sophistication in making illegal copies is alarming.

But in the jostle for supremacy, it appears that the anti-piracy camp is now one-up. Chennai-based Real Image Media Technologies, has introduced ‘invisible forensic water marking’, which should go some way in checking piracy.

Two caveats. First, the invisible FWM does not prevent making copies, but tells where the copy has been made. Second, it works only if the copy is made at digital cinema equipment that run on Real Image’s suite of software products.

Today, there are about 500 cinema theatres equipped with such products, which Real Image sells under the brand ‘Qube Cinema’. Leading theatre chains such as Pyramid Saimira, E-City and Shree Venkatesh Films, have Qube Cinema.

The software that Real Image has developed, which will be woven into Qube Cinema, will make some digital markings on a film as it is being screened.

These marks will survive compression of the image into a video CD, DVD or other forms of Internet download.

If a CD or a DVD is brought to Real Image, using ‘Thomson’s detection system’, the company will be able to identify exactly where and when the copy was made. Then it is upto the police.

At present, secret but visible marks are incorporated into film prints by producers, but because they are visible it is easy for a pirate to identify and cover it up in various ways, says Mr Arvind Ranganathan, Head – Strategy and Business Implementation, Real Image Media Technologies.

For example, if the serial number of the digital cinema system is shown as a visible number on the screen, this number could be blanked out by the pirate. But the invisible FWM is fool-proof.

The Rs 50-crore Real Image Media Technologies is a 22-year old company which is one of India’s larger developers and providers of digital media technology in film, video and audio.

Intel has invested in the company.

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