So you have an exclusive video that you want to Watermark in order to stop other people from stealing your work. If you are a blog/tech/gaming site then you will also need to Watermark your Videos.
See the full guide after the break.
First of all you need to get the video editor which we will use for Watermarking our logo. Virtual Dub is a free video editor which offers a wide variety of options for video editing and to top it all it is totally free.I have set up Virtual Dub completely with the plugins required to play the necessary video format and for Watermarking logo.
Download Virtual Dub
So now you have got the video editor which we will use to Watermark our videos. We also need to have the necessary codecs installed to actually be able to play the videos. I will suggest 3 video packs here which will ensure almost 100% playback of all the known video formats. They are K-Lite Codec Pack, Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative. Install all three of them, or if you are skeptical then just install the K-Lite Codec Pack.
Download K-Lite Codec Pack
Download Real Alternative
Download Quicktime Alternative
Ok, so we are setup with the basics. Now we will start with the actual process of Watermarking. I will be Watermarking a trailer of a video game which is in .mp4 format. Don’t worry, if you have installed every thing as i have recommended then you won’t have any trouble in playing the video.
Start Virtual Dub and you will be greeted with this screen.
Don’t worry, it is not as complicated as it may look. Click on file and then click on open video file. A new window will pop up. Now it is important to mention that there are two steps involved here.
1. If you are opening .avi, .mpg, .mpeg or any of the standard video format then just open the file as usual.
2. If you are opening .mp4 files, especially the ones which you downloaded online in 720p HD or 1080p HD resolution. They will need a tiny bit of change. When opening such files, make sure to tick the box as shown in the picture below.
A new window will pop up after you click on open, in this window change the option as shown in screenshots.
After the video is open, we can start working on it. Click on file and then click on filter. Follow the instructions below as given in screenshots.
Click on browse and navigate and select your logo. Make sure that it is in .BMP format. Only .BMP format works, you can easily convert to .BMP format using either Paint or Photoshop.
A new window will pop up as shown below. You can see that it has got quite some options to tweak but its not complicated. First of all click on Show Preview button to get a preview of how your logo will look in the video. Adjust the X and Y slider to decide the position of your logo. The Alpha setting determines the opacity for the logo. The Transparent color tick box should be ticked as it will hide the background and make the text more prominent. Tinker with these setting until you are satisfied.
See the finalized setting in the screenshot below.
Now we are all done with setting up our filter. Now its time to start the actual encoding. Click on Video and then click on Compression.
You can select any of your preferred video codecs here, i recommended xvid as its the most mainstream video codec.
Just select the setting as shown. If you encoding 720p or 1080p videos and want no quality lose then these are the recommended settings. Otherwise select the ones you prefer.
Now the final step is finalize all this, click on File and click on Save as AVI.
Select the location to save your video file and a name for it and sit back and and relax as your video starts encoding.
If you have any questions or problems, feel free to ask in comments.