Tutorial: Page (1) of 2 - 09/10/04

email article

print page

More Related Stories

When you post a streaming or downloadable file online for the world to view, who?s to say some nefarious no-do-well won?t pilfer your work and claim it as their own?  Or even worse, what happens if someone downloads your opus and then forgets what website they got it from?  To protect your media or to ensure that users remember your site, you should watermark your media.  With Squeeze 4, you have the option to do this built right in.

I?ve covered watermarking your encoded files before, but with each update to an application, the way to do it changes.  In this exercise, I?ll show you how to do it in Sorenson Squeeze 4.

To begin, you need to create your logo for the watermark.  This can be easily done in any program that supports PICT and BMP files, like Adobe Photoshop.  In many encoder applications you are only allowed to use grayscale images against a transparent background. With Squeeze, you can use either a grayscale or color image as your watermark.  While you may not see the need to have a color watermark, one potential use would be to create a corner ID or bug for your programs.

The color of the top left pixel is used by Squeeze 4 to determine what area of logo/watermark will be transparent.  For example, if the first pixel is blue, then anything that is that same color of blue in the rest of the image will be transparent.  This could cause some problems if you have a multi-colored logo, so the best solution would be to select a background color that is not part of the logo you want to keep.

The main thing to keep in mind when creating the logo to be watermarked is the encode size.  If your final encode is 320x240, you need to design/resize your logo with this in mind.  If you have a logo that is 250 pixels wide, it will take up a large portion of your final media file.

On the plus side, your logo will be encoded into your media file using lossless compression thus retaining the quality of the watermark. Also, the addition of a watermark will not increase the Date Rate requirements of the file as it is a separate encode.  This means that adding a watermark will not take away from your video encode.
 
With your logo set you are ready to watermark your video files.  Keep in mind that while the screen captures are from the Windows version of Sorenson Squeeze 4, this is the exact same process you would follow on the Mac version.

Step 1:  Launch Squeeze 4 and load the file to be compressed.

Step 2:  Apply a compression preset to your clip by dragging and dropping it in the Batch Window.  Alternately you can simply select the preset and clip the apply button.  For this exercise, I am using the QuickTime Medium Progressive (320x240) preset.

Step 3:  In the Batch Window expand the compression preset.  This display the compression schemes (audio and video) being used.

Step 4:  Double click on the Sorenson 3 codec to open the Compression Settings window.

By default the Compression Settings window is set to simple mode.  This is because most of the time changes you make in this area will be to the video and audio Data Rates, frame size, etc.  To gain access to other settings, you will need to click on the Advanced button.

Page: 1 2 Next Page