Watermarking

Flow Capture allows you to create watermarks that can be overlaid on any video or photo assets, as well as PDFs. These watermarks are also burnt into nearly any kind of video or image asset that you choose to make available for download or iOS offlining. 

If you have Admin permissions at any level, you can change a watermark's appearance in the Folder Settings panel of the Assets tab by clicking on the Watermarking icon.

There are six ways you can watermark your assets, which are accessible at different levels within Flow Capture:

• Company Watermark - This is an overarching watermark that's only accessible by company admins. Created in your account settings, it's then applied to every production and folder across the whole company. 
• Production Watermark - Set at the level of an individual creative project, it allows a company watermark or a custom watermark to be applied to every folder you create.
• Folder Watermark - This allows you to overwrite any company or production watermark at the folder level by creating a new set one exclusively for that folder.
• No Watermark - Turns off watermarking completely (only available at the folder level).
• Playlink Watermark - This allows the user to add a specific watermark template that is only applicable to that Playlink
• Share Watermark - This is similar to a Playlink watermark, but applies to an individual Share of a Playlist.

Watermarking Options

The settings available for changing a watermark are always the same, no matter the level you're working at. There will always be an option to apply watermarking settings from previous level:

Below that you'll find an option to create a new watermark template as well as all previously created watermarks.

When you click the 'Create New Template' button, a Watermark settings page will pop-up allowing you to customize your new watermark. Above all of that is a toggle which lets you switch between dark and light preview images. 

For each element, clicking the "Create" button will add it to that template:

The "Text" dropdown contains the different element types that can be added, and include all of the same elements that are available to be watermarked:

After making your selection, click Save to save the changes. Once a Watermark Template has been created, it will show up in your list of templates and can be edited, renamed, or deleted:

A Watermark Template can be apply to the entire production, a specific folder or at the playlink level!

Customizing Watermarks

You can customize a watermark by clicking 'Edit' from the 'More actions' menu. After you've done that, all these tools will be at your disposal for customization:

The first option at the top controls the alignment of the watermark, with options for Middle, Left and Right justification.

The Text Style option controls what the text of the watermark itself will look like: 

On top that, there is a series of sliders and a toggle for the following option:

• Font Size - Sets the size of the type in the watermark.
• Opacity - Sets how much you can see through your watermark.
• X and Y Position - Sets the position of the watermark relative to the anchor point you've chosen to align against.
• Shrink to Fit - Will adjust the size of the watermark so that it doesn't overrun the borders of the asset itself. 
• Rotation - A dropdown slider that allows you to put a spin on your watermark, angling it to any one of 360 degrees.

Company Watermarking

If you're a company admin, you can access Company Watermark setting by selecting your Company Name on the Desktop and clicking on the Waternark icon on your right-hand side:

From there, switch ON the toggle 'Enable Company Watermark'. The only difference between this and other settings panels are the two options at the top, in the Company Settings section. Everything else you use to create the actual watermark is the same whether you're making a production or folder watermark!

Production Watermarking

If you're a Company or Production Admin, you can access the production watermarking panel by selecting the Production on the Desktop tab and clicking on the Watermark icon on your right-hand side. That will open up the familiar watermark settings panel:

Watermarking Downloads

Flow Capture will try to watermark any video or image file that you request to download, but there are limits to what our system is able to process. 

For video files, Flow Capture cannot watermark DNx/MXF or ProRes files due to encoding limitations. If you would like source files of these types to be watermarked, you will need to apply when you create before uploading to our platform. This same limitation applies to RAW still image files. 

PDF Watermarking

The options you've chosen for video watermarks don't apply to PDFs. This is due to the differences in size and orientation between the document and video formats. As a result, PDF watermarking is constrained the user's email address, applied diagonally across the page.

That said, with a little work, we can apply options that you've chosen from the normal set of watermark settings to PDFs. It's important to note that these are often not as effective for security as our normal solution for these assets because the difference in aspect ratios they're made for (16:9 videos vs a vertical document) doesn't apply evenly when adjusted. The end result is typically a wide, shallow watermark that doesn’t fit over much of the page, even when positioned diagonally.

Metadata Watermarking

You can also add watermarks to your assets based on the metadata that's attached to them. To start, choose the Custom Text option from the top of the dropdown menu options. Type in the following:

{META.}

Between the period and closing brace, add in the piece of metadata you want displayed, using lower-case characters and underscores for spaces. For example:

{META.scene}

or 

{META.shutter_angle}

Any of the metadata fields listed in the Metadata Panel can be added, from aspect ratio to white point, so get as detailed as you need to - you can also have multiple metadata tags within one watermark!

Playlink Watermarking

When creating and sending a Playlink, the assets will be watermarked based on the folders settings by default. If you wish to apply a different watermark specifically for a single Playlink, you can do so in one of two ways.

The first way is to create a watermark template with the elements of the watermark you wish to add to the Playlink, and then select that template to apply it. For more on creating a Watmermark Template, please review our help doc here: Watermark Templates

Once you do so, when creating the Playlink, you'll have the option to use the default watermark, or you can select the watermark template that you created:

The second way to create a Playlink-specific watermark is to do so "on the fly." In order to do that, select the 3 vertical dots next to the watermark preview, and click "Create Override."

You'll then have the ability to create a new watermark using the same interface as above. Once done, click Save, and the watermark will update to this newly created watermark.

Note: it will be given a default name, but that can be changed by clicking the pencil icon, updating the name, and clicking Save.

Playlist Share Watermarking

When creating a Share of a Playlist, the options for configuration will be very similar to those of a Playlink, including the ability to select a watermark template to be applied to that Share.

If no watermark template is selected, each asset will be watermarked based on the folder-level watermark settings where it lives.