How to remove watermark from video

[bakhtiyarm92371861]

Please tell me details

[davescm]

Go to the owner of the image/video and ask for a copy without the watermark. If this is for legitimate use, that should not be a problem.

Dave

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Watermarks are usually there for a reason -- to prove ownership.  Removal of watermarks from a video that you don't own is unethical and could be a violation of copyright.

If you have the owner's permission to use the video, contact them directly and ask for an un-marked version.

Nancy

[Greg340762572unr]

I have numerous Videos that have Watermarks placed on them by unauthorized persons. I have established this by contacting the original producers of said videos. They themselves are concerned about this practice and suggested I contact Adobe for help in removing these Watermarks. I have tried other methods but once I remove the Watermark two things happen. The area were the Watermark existed is left 'blurred' and as the Watermark is at specific times during the video the 'blurred' vision lasts througout the entire video which is not what I wanted. Any help would be appreciated including a step by step method.  Regards Greg340762572unr.

[Nancy OShea]

Watermarks are intentionally difficult to remove for a reason.

If this is really on the up & up, you should ask producers for copies of original videos without the watermarks.

[Greg340762572unr]

So you are saying there is no way of removing the Watermarks? The program I'm talking about is Produced by 'Cineflix' Canada and the Series is 'Air Crash Investigation' here in Australia and 'Mayday' in the USA and Canada.

I have approached 'Cineflix' four or five times with no reply except to say it's out of their hands and they don't supply 'clean copies' to anyone. There are many many copies on 'Dailymotion' but ALL have Watermarks illegally put on the Videos. I'm stuck between the 'rock and the hard place' as we say here in Australia and to make it worse the Series was coming out on DVD but now that has ceased also.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

I have approached 'Cineflix' four or five times with no reply except to say it's out of their hands and they don't supply 'clean copies' to anyone. 

The copyright holders refusing to provide you with unwatermarked material seems to indicate that they do not want you to have that material. 

As with any unwanted elements in an image »removing« watermarks from images is not impossible in principle (though it may actually mean creating/inserting new content for the affected regions rather than restoring the original content) but you should not expect advice on illegal practices here. 

Another point: You seem to be talking of videos – so why post on the Photoshop Forum? 

Photoshop’s video editing capablities appear vastly inferior to proper video editing software’s like After Effects. 

[marcmori]

I totally agree with you about the purpose of watermarks. Often, if you contact the provider, you can obtain better quality and codecs. However, this technique is becoming very popular on the web, and many people offer watermark removers. It will be very interesting to see what Adobe can propose for this, especially for people who have the right to use the images and prioritize time over quality.

[davescm]

I hope Adobe do nothing at all to make this easier. Why would they simplify image/video piracy, in software that they sell to original content creators around the world?

In fact I do like and support their moves toward the content credentials initiatives to make piracy harder, and identification of original creation/ownership easier.

Dave

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Technically a watermark is little different from other artefacts/unwanted elments like lens dirt, so I think the same tools and techniques that can be applied to remedy the one can be used to »remove« the other. 

And there may sometimes be cases where the actual copyright holders lost the original material while still having a watermarked master copy … 

[davescm]

I agree, but the cases we tend to see discussed in these forums, including this thread, suggest that the copyright owners do not want to provide clean copies but someone wants help in circumventing that. Advising how to do that would break the forum guidelines.

Dave

[jane-e]

@marcmori 

You replied to a thread from seven years ago in 2017, but copyright law has not changed. Here is the law in the USA. It may vary in other countries.

506 (d). Criminal offenses

"Fraudulent Removal of Copyright Notice.—Any person who, with fraudulent intent, removes or alters any notice of copyright appearing on a copy of a copyrighted work shall be fined not more than $2,500."

https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html

We cannot assist with illegal activities.

Jane

[Conrad C]

Removing a watermark can be a challenge because some watermarks have different opacities than others, and it is a much bigger challenge to remove a full image watermark compared to a little one in the corner. Also, some watermarks are animated.

Given the way the latest Photoshop features are going, someone with a good handle on them might be able to do it without needing a specific watermark removal feature.

But there are two reasons why you might not soon see a watermark remover in Photoshop:

Yes, there may be many other watermark remover apps out there. But one big difference is that Adobe has many large customers who have legal teams whose job it is to protect intellectual property, and they might oppose a watermark remover in Photoshop. Those customers are a major reason Adobe has had to make it a priority to put accountability and provenance into their implementations of generative AI, such as developing commercially-safe generative AI and adding Photoshop features that support the industry-wide Content Authenticity Initiative. Watermark removal goes against that.

Also, on the technical side, Photoshop is primarily a still image editor. Although it has some useful video editing features, as a video editor it’s very limited. If (that’s a big if) a watermark remover was to ever appear in an Adobe app, you are much more likely to see it first in one of their video apps. For example, a video watermark remover would probably work a lot like the Roto Brush and Content-Aware Fill features already in Adobe After Effects, which are smart enough to adapt to changes across video frames. Therefore if you really want this and it has to work with video, it’s probably a better use of your time to request it in those apps.

[Nancy OShea]

Just remember that embedded digital watermarks (aka barcodes) are not so easy to defeat.  Humans can't see them but machines can.

https://www.digimarc.com/product-digitization/data-carriers/digital-watermarks?