Digital Rapids is working with YouTube to integrate support for Content ID, YouTube’s content identification and management system, directly into Digital Rapids’ award-winning range of media production and repurposing systems.

Digital Rapids’ encoding and transcoding systems are used by leading media organizations to transform live, tape and file-based video and audio content into the formats required for viewing on multiple platforms including broadcast, cable and satellite television; IPTV; the Web; mobile phones and personal media players.

The integration of YouTube Content ID support with Digital Rapids’ systems enables users to generate Content ID reference files – often referred to as “fingerprints” – immediately from the content during the encoding or transcoding process. These digital fingerprints are then uploaded to YouTube’s Content ID system. YouTube’s content identification tools compare existing and incoming user-uploaded videos against the reference file, identifying the ownership of such content and taking the action specified by the owner’s usage policies. Content owners can choose to block user-uploaded content, permit it on YouTube while simply tracking usage data, or monetize the uploaded media by running advertising against it.

The creation of Content ID reference files directly within existing encoding and transcoding workflows increases productivity and reduces operational costs by eliminating the need for separate steps to create the fingerprints. By generating the Content ID reference files during production, content owners also need only upload the much smaller ID file to YouTube for tracking and protection, rather than the actual content itself – increasing security and significantly shortening the time before YouTube can begin blocking, tracking or monetizing uploaded copies of the content.

Integrated YouTube Content ID support will be available in upcoming versions of Digital Rapids’ StreamZ and StreamZHD multi-format ingest and encoding systems and the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager enterprise-class, high-volume transcoding software. Fingerprints of archived streams from the TouchStream live streaming appliance can also be generated.