How to Embed ANY IDENTIFIABLE Information in a Video WITHOYT RE-ENCODING?

[Windfall]

Hi,

I just want to if there's a way to include any identifiable information such as text information regarding subject/copyright or watermark in a .avi/divx video without re-encoding it?

There's a 'set file information' option in VirtualDub, but if I set text info there such as my name etc & save it in direct stream copy(without encoding) I can't see it in the file's summary.

Is anything can be done? Please help me! Thank you.

[thecoalman]

None that I'm aware of, the information in the frame changes therefore it needs to be recompressed.

[TJohns]

Technically, the AVI container format supports additional "streams" of data to be included besides the standard video & audio streams. This can be "once-off" data (sort of like a header tag or trailing tag), or muxed thru the whole file (which is how a DivX file gets multiple audio or subtitle tracks). Player programs that scan the file *should* be programmed to simply ignore any stream type they don't recognise. Various programs throw their own info into a generated file (see the User Data/Meta Data section in GSpot for example), but I'm not aware of any utility that allows you to add arbitrary streams of your own into an existing file. Check Google for RIFF (the structure inside an AVI file) editors/decompilers ... like http://abcavi.kibi.ru/

Trev

[Windfall]

OK thank you for your responses.I guess I'll need to re-encode then.

But please tell me two things:

1. If I re-compress a video using the EXACT same compression/bitrate etc the video have now, will the re-encoded video will still be of lower quality than the original?

2. Is there any way to include subtle info which will not be visible in the video like watermark but rather in the file information?

Thanks.

[redwudz]

To your first question, any time you re-encode you will have some quality loss. If you started with very high quality, it would be less noticeable. If you up your bitrate on the re-encode, there will be less lose, but your file will be larger than the original.

For the second question, I suppose you could put in a very faint logo or watermark or something only a pixel or two wide. Take a look at one of the VirtualDub logo filters and see what is possible. There may be ways to embed something in the video stream, header, etc., also, but I've never tried that.