audiowmark

= audiowmark - Audio Watermarking

== Description

`audiowmark` is an Open Source (GPL) solution for audio watermarking.

A sound file is read by the software, and a 128-bit message is stored in a
watermark in the output sound file. For human listeners, the files typically
sound the same.

However, the 128-bit message can be retrieved from the output sound file. Our
tests show, that even if the file is converted to mp3 or ogg (with bitrate 128
kbit/s or higher), the watermark usually can be retrieved without problems. The
process of retrieving the message does not need the original audio file (blind
decoding).

Internally, audiowmark is using the patchwork algorithm to hide the data in the
spectrum of the audio file. The signal is split into 1024 sample frames. For
each frame, some pseoudo-randomly selected amplitudes of the frequency bands of
a 1024-value FFTs are increased or decreased slightly, which can be detected
later. The algorithm used here is inspired by

Martin Steinebach: Digitale Wasserzeichen für Audiodaten.
Darmstadt University of Technology 2004, ISBN 3-8322-2507-2

== Open Source License

`audiowmark` is *open source* software available under the *GPLv3
or later* license.

Copyright (C) 2018-2020 Stefan Westerfeld

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see .

== Adding a Watermark

To add a watermark to the soundfile in.wav with a 128-bit message (which is
specified as hex-string):

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ audiowmark add in.wav out.wav 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677*
Input: in.wav
Output: out.wav
Message: 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677
Strength: 10

Time: 3:59
Sample Rate: 48000
Channels: 2
Data Blocks: 4
....

If you want to use `audiowmark` in any serious application, please read the
section <> on how to generate the 128-bit message. Typically these
bits should be a *hash* or *HMAC* of some sort.

The most important options for adding a watermark are:

--key ::
Use watermarking key from file (see <>).

--strength ::
Set the watermarking strength (see <>).

== Retrieving a Watermark

To get the 128-bit message from the watermarked file, use:

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ audiowmark get out.wav*
pattern 0:05 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.324 0.059 A
pattern 0:57 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.413 0.112 B
pattern 0:57 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.368 0.086 AB
pattern 1:49 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.302 0.098 A
pattern 2:40 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.361 0.093 B
pattern 2:40 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.331 0.096 AB
pattern all 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.350 0.054
....
The output of `audiowmark get` is designed to be machine readable. Each line
that starts with `pattern` contains one decoded message. The fields are
seperated by one or more space characters. The first field is a *timestamp*
indicating the position of the data block. The second field is the *decoded
message*. For most purposes this is all you need to know.

The software was designed under the assumption that the message is a *hash* or
*HMAC* of some sort. Before you start using `audiowmark` in any serious
application, please read the section <>. You - the user - should
be able to decide whether a message is correct or not. To do this, on
watermarking song files, you could *create a database entry* for each message
you embedded in a watermark. During retrieval, you should perform a *database
lookup* for each pattern `audiowmark get` outputs. If the message is not found,
then you should assume that a decoding error occurred. In our example each
pattern was decoded correctly, because the watermark was not damaged at all,
but if you for instance use lossy compression (with a low bitrate), it may
happen that only some of the decoded patterns are correct. Or none, if the
watermark was damaged too much.

The third field is the *sync score* (higher is better). The synchronization
algorithm tries to find valid data blocks in the audio file, that become
candidates for decoding.

The fourth field is the *decoding error* (lower is better). During message
decoding, we use convolutional codes for error correction, to make the
watermarking more robust.

The fifth field is the *block type*. There are two types of data blocks,
A blocks and B blocks. A single data block can be decoded alone, as it
contains a complete message. However, if during watermark detection an
A block followed by a B block was found, these two can be decoded
together (then this field will be AB), resulting in even higher error
correction capacity than one block alone would have.

To improve the error correction capacity even further, the `all` pattern
combines all data blocks that are available. The combined decoded
message will often be the most reliable result (meaning that even if all
other patterns were incorrect, this could still be right).

The most important options for getting a watermark are:

--key ::
Use watermarking key from file (see <>).

--strength ::
Set the watermarking strength (see <>).

--detect-speed::
--detect-speed-patient::
Detect and correct replay speed difference (see <>).

--json ::
Write results to in machine readable JSON format.

[[key]]
== Watermark Key

Since the software is Open Source, a watermarking key should be used to ensure
that the message bits cannot be retrieved by somebody else (which would also
allow removing the watermark without loss of quality). The watermark key
controls all pseudo-random parameters of the algorithm. This means that
it determines which frequency bands are increased or decreased to store a
0 bit or a 1 bit. Without the key, it is impossible to decode the message
bits from the audio file alone.

Our watermarking key is a 128-bit AES key. A key can be generated using

audiowmark gen-key test.key

and can be used for the add/get commands as follows:

audiowmark add --key test.key in.wav out.wav 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677
audiowmark get --key test.key out.wav

Keys can be named using the `gen-key --name` option, and the key name will be
reported for each match:

audiowmark gen-key oct23.key --name "October 2023"

Finally, it is possible to use the `--key` option more than once for watermark
detection. In this case, all keys that are specified will be tried. This is
useful if you change keys on a regular basis, and passing multiple keys is
more efficient than performing watermark detection multiple times with one
key.

audiowmark get --key oct23.key --key nov23.key --key dec23.key out.wav

[[strength]]
== Watermark Strength

The watermark strength parameter affects how much the watermarking algorithm
modifies the input signal. A stronger watermark is more audible, but also more
robust against modifications. The default strength is 10. A watermark with that
strength is recoverable after mp3/ogg encoding with 128kbit/s or higher. In our
informal listening tests, this setting also has a very good subjective quality.

A higher strength (for instance 15) would be helpful for instance if robustness
against multiple conversions or conversions to low bit rates (i.e. 64kbit/s) is
desired.

A lower strength (for instance 6) makes the watermark less audible, but also
less robust. Strengths below 5 are not recommended. To set the strength, the
same value has to be passed during both, generation and retrieving the
watermark. Fractional strengths (like 7.5) are possible.

audiowmark add --strength 15 in.wav out.wav 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677
audiowmark get --strength 15 out.wav

[[rec-payload]]
== Recommendations for the Watermarking Payload

Although `audiowmark` does not specify what the 128-bit message stored in the
watermark should be, it was designed under the assumption that the message
should be a *hash* or *HMAC* of some sort.

Lets look at a typical use case. We have a song called *Dreams* by an artist
called *Alice*. A user called *John Smith* downloads a watermarked copy.

Later, we find this file somewhere on the internet. Typically we want to answer
the questions:

* is this one of the files we previously watermarked?
* what song/artist is this?
* which user shared it?

_When the user downloads a watermarked copy_, we construct a string that
contains all information we need to answer our questions, for example
like this:

Artist:Alice|Title:Dreams|User:John Smith

To obtain the 128-bit message, we can hash this string, for instance by
using the first 128 bits of a SHA-256 hash like this:

$ STRING='Artist:Alice|Title:Dreams|User:John Smith'
$ MSG=`echo -n "$STRING" | sha256sum | head -c 32`
$ echo $MSG
ecd057f0d1fbb25d6430b338b5d72eb2

This 128-bit message can be used as watermark:

$ audiowmark add --key my.key song.wav song.wm.wav $MSG

At this point, we should also *create a database entry* consisting of the
hash value `$MSG` and the corresponding string `$STRING`.

The shell commands for creating the hash are listed here to provide a
simplified example. Fields (like the song title) can contain the characters `'`
and `|`, so these cases need to be dealt with.

_If we find a watermarked copy of the song on the net_, the first step is to
detect the watermark message using

$ audiowmark get --key my.key song.wm.wav
pattern 0:05 ecd057f0d1fbb25d6430b338b5d72eb2 1.377 0.068 A
pattern 0:57 ecd057f0d1fbb25d6430b338b5d72eb2 1.392 0.109 B
[...]

The second step is to perform a *database lookup* for each result returned by
`audiowmark`. If we find a matching entry in our database, this is one of the
files we previously watermarked.

As a last step, we can use the string stored in the database, which contains
the song/artist and the user that shared it.

_The advantages of using a hash as message are:_

1. Although `audiowmark` sometimes produces *false positives*, this doesn't
matter, because it is extremely unlikely that a false positive will match an
existing database entry.

2. Even if a few *bit errors* occur, it is extremely unlikely that a song
watermarked for user A will be attributed to user B, simply because all hash
bits depend on the user. So this is a much better payload than storing a user
ID, artist ID and song ID in the message bits directly.

3. It is *easy to extend*, because we can add any fields we need to the hash
string. For instance, if we want to store the name of the album, we can simply
add it to the string.

4. If the hash matches exactly, it is really *hard to deny* that it was this
user who shared the song. How else could all 128 bits of the hash match the
message bits decoded by `audiowmark`?

[[speed]]
== Speed Detection

If a watermarked audio signal is played back a little faster or slower than the
original speed, watermark detection will fail. This could happen by accident if
the digital watermark was converted to an analog signal and back and the
original speed was not (exactly) preserved. It could also be done intentionally
as an attack to avoid the watermark from being detected.

In order to be able to find the watermark in these cases, `audiowmark` can try
to figure out the speed difference to the original audio signal and correct the
replay speed before detecting the watermark. The search range for the replay
speed is approximately *[0.8..1.25]*.

Example: add a watermark to `in.wav` and increase the replay speed by 5% using
`sox`.
[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ audiowmark add in.wav out.wav 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677*
[...]
*$ sox out.wav out1.wav speed 1.05*
....

Without speed detection, we get no results. With speed detection the speed
difference is detected and corrected so we get results.
[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ audiowmark get out1.wav*
*$ audiowmark get out1.wav --detect-speed*
speed 1.049966
pattern 0:05 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.209 0.147 A-SPEED
pattern 0:57 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.301 0.143 B-SPEED
pattern 0:57 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.255 0.145 AB-SPEED
pattern 1:49 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.380 0.173 A-SPEED
pattern all 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.297 0.130 SPEED
....

The speed detection algorithm is not enabled by default because it is
relatively slow (total cpu time required) and needs a lot of memory. However
the search is automatically run in parallel using many threads on systems with
many cpu cores. So on good hardware it makes sense to always enable this option
to be robust to replay speed attacks.

There are two versions of the speed detection algorithm, `--detect-speed` and
`--detect-speed-patient`. The difference is that the patient version takes
more cpu time to detect the speed, but produces more accurate results.

== Short Payload (experimental)

By default, the watermark will store a 128-bit message. In this mode, we
recommend using a 128bit hash (or HMAC) as payload. No error checking is
performed, the user needs to test patterns that the watermarker decodes to
ensure that they really are one of the expected patterns, not a decoding
error.

As an alternative, an experimental short payload option is available, for very
short payloads (12, 16 or 20 bits). It is enabled using the `--short `
command line option, for instance for 16 bits:

audiowmark add --short 16 in.wav out.wav abcd
audiowmark get --short 16 out.wav

Internally, a larger set of bits is sent to ensure that decoded short patterns
are really valid, so in this mode, error checking is performed after decoding,
and only valid patterns are reported.

Besides error checking, the advantage of a short payload is that fewer bits
need to be sent, so decoding will more likely to be successful on shorter
clips.

== Video Files

For video files, `videowmark` can be used to add a watermark to the audio track
of video files. To add a watermark, use

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ videowmark add in.avi out.avi 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677*
Audio Codec: -c:a mp3 -ab 128000
Input: in.avi
Output: out.avi
Message: 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677
Strength: 10

Time: 3:53
Sample Rate: 44100
Channels: 2
Data Blocks: 4
....

To detect a watermark, use

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ videowmark get out.avi*
pattern 0:05 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.294 0.142 A
pattern 0:57 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.191 0.144 B
pattern 0:57 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.242 0.145 AB
pattern 1:49 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.215 0.120 A
pattern 2:40 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.079 0.128 B
pattern 2:40 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.147 0.126 AB
pattern all 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 1.195 0.104
....

The key and strength can be set using the command line options

--key ::
Use watermarking key from file (see <>).

--strength ::
Set the watermarking strength (see <>).

Videos can be watermarked on-the-fly using <>.

== Output as Stream

Usually, an input file is read, watermarked and an output file is written.
This means that it takes some time before the watermarked file can be used.

An alternative is to output the watermarked file as stream to stdout. One use
case is sending the watermarked file to a user via network while the
watermarker is still working on the rest of the file. Here is an example how to
watermark a wav file to stdout:

audiowmark add in.wav - 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 | play -

In this case the file in.wav is read, watermarked, and the output is sent
to stdout. The "play -" can start playing the watermarked stream while the
rest of the file is being watermarked.

If - is used as output, the output is a valid .wav file, so the programs
running after `audiowmark` will be able to determine sample rate, number of
channels, bit depth, encoding and so on from the wav header.

Note that all input formats supported by audiowmark can be used in this way,
for instance flac/mp3:

audiowmark add in.flac - 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 | play -
audiowmark add in.mp3 - 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 | play -

== Input from Stream

Similar to the output, the `audiowmark` input can be a stream. In this case,
the input must be a valid .wav file. The watermarker will be able to
start watermarking the input stream before all data is available. An
example would be:

cat in.wav | audiowmark add - out.wav 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677

It is possible to do both, input from stream and output as stream.

cat in.wav | audiowmark add - - 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 | play -

Streaming input is also supported for watermark detection.

cat in.wav | audiowmark get -

== Raw Streams

So far, all streams described here are essentially wav streams, which means
that the wav header allows `audiowmark` to determine sample rate, number of
channels, bit depth, encoding and so forth from the stream itself, and the a
wav header is written for the program after `audiowmark`, so that this can
figure out the parameters of the stream.

There are two cases where this is problematic. The first case is if the full
length of the stream is not known at the time processing starts. Then a wav
header cannot be used, as the wav file contains the length of the stream. The
second case is that the program before or after `audiowmark` doesn't support wav
headers.

For these two cases, raw streams are available. The idea is to set all
information that is needed like sample rate, number of channels,... manually.
Then, headerless data can be processed from stdin and/or sent to stdout.

--input-format raw::
--output-format raw::
--format raw::

These can be used to set the input format or output format to raw. The
last version sets both, input and output format to raw.

--raw-rate ::

This should be used to set the sample rate. The input sample rate and
the output sample rate will always be the same (no resampling is
done by the watermarker). There is no default for the sampling rate,
so this parameter must always be specified for raw streams.

--raw-input-bits ::
--raw-output-bits ::
--raw-bits ::

The options can be used to set the input number of bits, the output number
of bits or both. The number of bits can either be `16` or `24`. The default
number of bits is `16`.

--raw-input-endian ::
--raw-output-endian ::
--raw-endian ::

These options can be used to set the input/output endianness or both.
The parameter can either be `little` or `big`. The default
endianness is `little`.

--raw-input-encoding ::
--raw-output-encoding ::
--raw-encoding ::

These options can be used to set the input/output encoding or both.
The parameter can either be `signed` or `unsigned`. The
default encoding is `signed`.

--raw-channels ::

This can be used to set the number of channels. Note that the number
of input channels and the number of output channels must always be the
same. The watermarker has been designed and tested for stereo files,
so the number of channels should really be `2`. This is also the
default.

== Other Command Line Options

--output-format rf64::

Regular wav files are limited to 4GB in size. By using this option,
`audiowmark` will write RF64 wave files, which do not have this size limit.
This is not the default because not all programs might be able to read RF64
wave files.

--q, --quiet::

Disable all information messages generated by `audiomark`.

--strict::

This option will enable strict error checking, which may in some situations
make `audiowmark` return an error, where it could continue.

[[hls]]
== HTTP Live Streaming

=== Introduction for HLS

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) is a protocol to deliver audio or video streams via
HTTP. One example for using HLS in practice would be: a user watches a video
in a web browser with a player like `hls.js`. The user is free to
play/pause/seek the video as he wants. `audiowmark` can watermark the audio
content while it is being transmitted to the user.

HLS splits the contents of each stream into small segments. For the watermarker
this means that if the user seeks to a position far ahead in the stream, the
server needs to start sending segments from where the new play position is, but
everything in between can be ignored.

Another important property of HLS is that it allows separate segments for the
video and audio stream of a video. Since we watermark only the audio track of a
video, the video segments can be sent as they are (and different users can get
the same video segments). What is watermarked are the audio segments only, so
here instead of sending the original audio segments to the user, the audio
segments are watermarked individually for each user, and then transmitted.

Everything necessary to watermark HLS audio segments is available within
`audiowmark`. The server side support which is necessary to send the right
watermarked segment to the right user is not included.

[[hls-requirements]]
=== HLS Requirements

HLS support requires some headers/libraries from ffmpeg:

* libavcodec
* libavformat
* libavutil
* libswresample

To enable these as dependencies and build `audiowmark` with HLS support, use the
`--with-ffmpeg` configure option:

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ ./configure --with-ffmpeg*
....

In addition to the libraries, `audiowmark` also uses the two command line
programs from ffmpeg, so they need to be installed:

* ffmpeg
* ffprobe

=== Preparing HLS segments

The first step for preparing content for streaming with HLS would be splitting
a video into segments. For this documentation, we use a very simple example
using ffmpeg. No matter what the original codec was, at this point we force
transcoding to AAC with our target bit rate, because during delivery the stream
will be in AAC format.

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -f hls -master_pl_name replay.m3u8 -c:a aac -ab 192k \
-var_stream_map "a:0,agroup:aud v:0,agroup:aud" \
-hls_playlist_type vod -hls_list_size 0 -hls_time 10 vs%v/out.m3u8*
....

This splits the `video.mp4` file into an audio stream of segments in the `vs0`
directory and a video stream of segments in the `vs1` directory. Each segment
is approximately 10 seconds long, and a master playlist is written to
`replay.m3u8`.

Now we can add the relevant audio context to each audio ts segment. This is
necessary so that when the segment is watermarked in order to be transmitted to
the user, `audiowmark` will have enough context available before and after the
segment to create a watermark which sounds correct over segment boundaries.

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ audiowmark hls-prepare vs0 vs0prep out.m3u8 video.mp4*
AAC Bitrate: 195641 (detected)
Segments: 18
Time: 2:53
....

This steps reads the audio playlist `vs0/out.m3u8` and writes all segments
contained in this audio playlist to a new directory `vs0prep` which
contains the audio segments prepared for watermarking.

The last argument in this command line is `video.mp4` again. All audio
that is watermarked is taken from this audio master. It could also be
supplied in `wav` format. This makes a difference if you use lossy
compression as target format (for instance AAC), but your original
video has an audio stream with higher quality (i.e. lossless).

=== Watermarking HLS segments

So with all preparations made, what would the server have to do to send a
watermarked version of the 6th audio segment `vs0prep/out5.ts`?

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ audiowmark hls-add vs0prep/out5.ts send5.ts 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677*
Message: 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677
Strength: 10

Time: 0:15
Sample Rate: 44100
Channels: 2
Data Blocks: 0
AAC Bitrate: 195641
....

So instead of sending out5.ts (which has no watermark) to the user, we would
send send5.ts, which is watermarked.

In a real-world use case, it is likely that the server would supply the input
segment on stdin and send the output segment as written to stdout, like this

[subs=+quotes]
....
*$ [...] | audiowmark hls-add - - 0123456789abcdef0011223344556677 | [...]*
[...]
....

The usual parameters are supported in `audiowmark hls-add`, like

--key ::
Use watermarking key from file (see <>).

--strength ::
Set the watermarking strength (see <>).

The AAC bitrate for the output segment can be set using:

--bit-rate ::
Set the AAC bit-rate for the generated watermarked segment.

The rules for the AAC bit-rate of the newly encoded watermarked segment are:

* if the --bit-rate option is used during `hls-add`, this bit-rate will be used
* otherwise, if the `--bit-rate` option is used during `hls-prepare`, this bit-rate will be used
* otherwise, the bit-rate of the input material is detected during `hls-prepare`

== Compiling from Source

Stable releases are available from http://uplex.de/audiowmark

The steps to compile the source code are:

./configure
make
make install

If you build from git (which doesn't include `configure`), the first
step is `./autogen.sh`. In this case, you need to ensure that (besides
the dependencies listed below) the `autoconf-archive` package is
installed.

== Dependencies

If you compile from source, `audiowmark` needs the following libraries:

* libfftw3
* libsndfile
* libgcrypt
* libzita-resampler
* libmpg123

If you want to build with HTTP Live Streaming support, see also
<>.

== Building fftw

`audiowmark` needs the single prevision variant of fftw3.

If you are building fftw3 from source, use the `--enable-float`
configure parameter to build it, e.g.::

cd ${FFTW3_SOURCE}
./configure --enable-float --enable-sse && \
make && \
sudo make install

or, when building from git

cd ${FFTW3_GIT}
./bootstrap.sh --enable-shared --enable-sse --enable-float && \
make && \
sudo make install

== Docker Build

You should be able to execute `audiowmark` via Docker.
Example that outputs the usage message:

docker build -t audiowmark .
docker run -v :/data --rm -i audiowmark -h