Adding a Video Copyright "Watermark"

With anything that is video now subject to ending up on YouTube or its clones, one of the things you will need to do with any internally or externally posted media is to add a digital copyright to make sure that its use is covered. Due to the ease of folks downloading and editing anything, this "watermark" will have to be placed throughout the entire video, as well as full copyright usage information appearing at either the beginning or the end (preferrably both).

Watermarks are normally adding an overlay of a piece of text or a logo, similar to the current TV practice of putting the station's logo in a corner. Normally this is not too obtrusive to the interpretation of the media, and is often a transparent outline of the logo instead of an opaque one. Copyright usage practices differ from country to country, but as the Internet is a world-wide distribution media, you will have to make suire to include a point of origin disclaimer so that any legal issues that arise will be interpreted more easily. Fair rights usage should be spelled out either within the credits, or on the original page of the source file. Embedded links to the original page(s) as well as tag format information containing the same text, can and should be applied to the media.

Obviously, what you are trying to avoid is legal issues surrounding any sort of "official" sanctioning of the use of your original material in anything offensive or contrary to your corporation's usage guidelines. There is no way to fully prohibit the reuse of your material - you just want to make sure you deter the re-editing outside your fair use principles.

Windows Media Format Steps - Using Virtualdub (if you do not have QuickTime Pro)

QuickTime Pro Steps -

1. Open both the movie and the logo image in QuickTime Pro
2. Select the movie's window and pick "Select All" from the "Edit" menu
3. Select the logo's window and pick "Copy" from the "Edit" menu
4. Click back on the movie window, and pick "Add to Movie" from the "Edit" menu
5. Select "Show Movie Properties" from the "Window" menu
6. You should see a video track that is the logo - check the format field to see its type (usually JPEG or GIF). Click that line, and then click on the "Visual Settings" tab. Here you can change the location and other effects for the logo portion of the movie
7. Save