VirtualDub: How to watermark your videos

There are many folks out there who like to watermark their videos in all possible kind of ways. Some like to use huge introductions and others, like me, are satisfied with small but noninvasive logos. Before we start, you’ll obviously need VirtualDub, and in this case for the watermark to work, the ffdshow codec.

Yes, I’m afraid, yet another codec. You need this codec, because it provides filters we need, such as inserting the logo into a video. The ffdshow codec installs a plugin called “ffvdub.vdf” into your VirtualDub plugin directory. This plugin allows the access to ffdshows filters via VirtualDub. VirtualDub has it’s own internal logo filter, but the problem with this filter is it leaves a mess after encoding. The logo is barely readable, it’s pixellated and all other sort of issues. Whereas the ffdshow filter leave a clear, readable logo instead.

Open your video, set your VirtualDub up to do whatever encoding your need. Here are two ideas. Now comes the logo part.

Adding a logo to a video
Open up Video -> Filters and add the filter “ffvdub” from Milan Cutka:
 

Now a new window will appear where all the available ffdshow filters are listed:

You’re looking for the filter “Bitmap overlay”. Enable it. Now select your *.bmp logo, place it to your liking via horizontal/vertical position and “Alignment”. Experiment with “Mode” and “Opacity”. Don’t forget to enable preview it.

If you don’t have a *.bmp logo or don’t want to waste a lot of time, you can use the logo template I made a while back. It’s very important in what order the filters are listed! For example in the screenshot you see “Resize & aspect” followed by “Sharpen” followed by “Bitmap overlay”.

Although Resize and Sharpen are deactivated, if they were all enabled then the video FIRST is resized, THEN sharpened, THEN the logo is applied in this order. This way the logo remains unaffected by Resize and Sharpen and retains its original quality (but in the end will ultimately be affected on how you set up your compression settings).

Here’s how my logo looks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFBM5q98mwc (in the bottom right corner)