I noticed it has a built-in update check, which cannot be disabled in the "Options" BUT can be disabled via the registry (if anybody is interested).
On my XP SP3 it was here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\softorbits\VideoWatermarkMaker
Change the "disableUpdates" from "0" to "1" (right-click on "disableUpdates" and choose "Modify", then change "Value data" to "1").

#13: Thanks for writing that:
Yes, it's really annoying that so many people who have no use for a given program spend so much time downgrading the program. I can't think of any use I'd have for a sledgehammer but if they gave one away free I'd NEVER spend a second of my time badmouthing the item just because I have no use for it.
I design websites for a living. Most are for outdoor businesses (fishing guides and resorts). I've probably designed over 1000 websites in the last 20 years and these sites are all feature lots of photos. People love to see lots of photos for these types of websites. I'm constantly seeing my photos on other peoples' websites. As an example a fishing guide may want to start a website but he doesn't have good photos of the Columbia River or of Salmon. So commonly he will do a search on Google images and take a few from here and there. Many seem to think that anything you find on the internet is free to copy. And they copy these (maybe crop them a bit or something) and post them on their own website.
Now I find most watermarks annoying. But when I get a rare photo of a 10' long Sturgeon jumping 4 feet out of the water and put it as the feature photo of a client's website, I really don't want to see it a few months later on 3 or 4 competitor's websites. So, damn right, I'll watermark it. That doesn't keep everyone from using it as if someone really wants to steal the photo they likely have software that removes watermarks. But it keeps 99% of the people from doing so.
And BTW. Copyright laws are usually COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS to the average person. I mean, big companies like MGM have the resources to track down copyright thieves and to protect their work. But the average person does not. So if you have a good photo. And even if you copyright the photo and take every legal step available to make sure nobody in any country can copy it. There is still little or nothing you can actually do if they do copy it. Because it ends up not being worth the cost of taking someone to court in order to make them cease usage of your work. I've had people copy entire pages of websites that I've designed (replacing my client's name and info with their own names etc.). I've contacted them only to be told one excuse or another but basically that they were not going to remove the items. So at that point Exactly what do I do? Hire an attorney for a few thousand bucks? I mean there are no copyright police. Even if you have a copyright infringement it's not like you can call the copyright people and tell them to punish someone who copied your work. You have to engage in a legal action. Even if I have a fabulous photo (like the one of a Sturgeon mentioned above), it's likely not worth HUGE bucks for an attorney and time going to court.
So, for me, using some watermarks and a few other safeguards are working for the most part and I really appreciate GOTD offering software like this one today. It may be buggy and I may not end up using it but it's worth a try for me. And I would much rather read some real reviews of the actual software than dozens of comments from people who are not interested in using the product but have NOTHING ELSE TO DO.
PLEASE PEOPLE: JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE ANY NEED FOR A SLEDGEHAMMER IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT NOBODY ELSE WANTS ONE. You don't need to comment on something you know nothing about. It's senseless and a waste of time for others who may need one.

@Lia: I agree with you. The only reason someone would want a watermark removed is to STEAL, which makes you a very bad person. YES, YOU WOULD BE A VERY IMMORAL PERSON TO WANT TO STEAL SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK.
Nasty, nasty, nasty.

I have also create e-books and have copyrighted them and locked them down, but there are tools out there that will break that down and allow people to copy my e-books and change its contents. FINE. God will get ya, I won't have to. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. You can't do the work yourself, so you resort to STEALING.

@22
Thanks for that, Matlock. I hope that was pro bono.

The following is general comment and is not legal advice as to the circumstances of any particular case.

The registration of a copyright and/or the imprint of a copyright notice on the material are both methods intended to help prove that copyright has been asserted and to put people on notice of that fact.

In both instances, they are simply "claims" of copyright.

Neither registration nor imprinting is a guarantee that the claim of copyright will be sustained by a court if a legal action is commenced. On the other hand, the use of those methods tend to substantially support the person who has claimed copyright.

It is not required that a claim of copyright be registered or that a a copyright notice be imprinted.

Generally, if a person reproduces and distributes copyrightable material, anyone who wants to challenge that would, himself, have to show the basis for his own claim of copyright.

The United States Copyright Act section 401(d), clearly states:

"(d) Evidentiary Weight of Notice.—If a notice of copyright in the form and position specified by this section appears on the published copy or copies to which a defendant in a copyright infringement suit had access, then no weight shall be given to such a defendant’s interposition of a defense based on innocent infringement in mitigation of actual or statutory damages, except as provided in the last sentence of section 504(c)(2)".

So, as you can see, issues in copyright cases include not only, a) Who owns the copyright?, but also b) Was the infringement innocent or knowing? The presence of a copyright notice can be some proof of (a), but clear proof as to (b).

So a product, such as that discussed today,can play an important role in the issues involved in copyright suits, and can also discourage both accidental and intentional infringement. I suspect that if a copyright notice is removed by an alleged infringer, there will likely be some tell-tale evidence that something has been removed from the very place in the material that the copyright notice appeared. That, too, can be strong evidence of the state of mind of the infringer.

The text of the Copyright Law of the United States can be found at http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

This comment is not intended to deal with the issue of whether the software today is or is not "buggy".

Giovanni took the words right out of my mouth. I own remove logo now and the purpose is to remove watermarks, trademarks etc. now here's a program claim to add watermarks to protect your video and the same company offers to remove watermarks, trademarks, or etc. wow how dumb is that. my 000000000000000000000000000.1 percent. I recommend Giovanni's alternative programs check them out.

I think you're better off thinking of video watermarks as branding rather than any sort of protection. In the US TV stations use at least the lower 3rd of the video frame to identify the station &/or advertise what they'll be showing in the future. On-line that branding [watermarking] advertises you &/or your biz. And while it may or may not be possible to remove your watermark, most people I think won't bother... unlike still images a video's content is generally more important than the picture quality, particularly on-line.

As far as (C) goes, it gives you standing to go after whomever uses your stuff without your permission -- actually getting results is another matter entirely. Hollywood can't stop illegal use, and they've got billions of dollars in resources.

One challenge when you use branding or watermarking is balancing the visibility of both your brand & the video's content. A tiny logo at the very bottom of the picture leaves the video unobscured, but is much more likely to go unnoticed & could be easily removed simply by cropping the video. Place a large logo center screen OTOH & viewers won't be able to see your video so they won't bother watching it, & if they don't watch it, what's the point? It's more work, but you can call attention to your brand by having it appear center screen for just a moment or two, then moving it out of the way for example to the top or bottom or one of the corners etc.

Another challenge is quality... Sharp, clearly defined edges don't encode or display as well as something softer with a bit of a fade & optionally a very small amount of shadow. Prepping your images beforehand, even if they're images of text, can help. Depending on the final video format you're using, level of compression etc., you might also experiment with encoding the video once, using less compression than the final version, then adding whatever branding or watermarks & encoding again to the final bit rate. Encoding discards data, & having less data in the video that you add your brand to might trick the encoder into giving your logo more prominence, compressing it a bit less. With your video content is what matters most, but with something like your logo, the most important thing is quality since it directly reflects you.

That all said, the actual overlaying of your branding or watermark on your video is fairly trivial from a technical standpoint -- you can use pro software & the 2 big differences will be it allows animations & you might not have to use some other app to prep the image(s) you overlay. Video Watermark Maker lets you work with shadows & transparency which might save you some time, but you'll have to decide if that's good enough for your work, or if you want to spend more time, effort, & possibly cash doing better. It's something that really is open-ended -- you aren't [or IMHO shouldn't be] trying to achieve the same levels as the title sequence in the latest Hollywood blockbuster, all for a YouTube video you shot with your cell, but at the same time you don't want something nasty looking associated with your name.

And finally, while this GOTD is designed for video branding or watermarking, if you don't have or want to bother with often more complicated video editing software, an overlay is an overlay, whatever you want to call it... There's no reason you can't use Video Watermark Maker to quickly title your video, add titles to sequences, add comments or call outs, really add whatever you want with the exception of animation or video.

To ric or #8,

I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY. NOTHING WRITTEN HERE SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVISE. ANY QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO THIS ISSUE SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO AN ATTORNEY WITH EXPERIENCE IN THIS FIELD.

You wrote:

"Why would anyone be interested to copy our videos?
How many of us need to watermark our videos anyway?
Is it a big deal if someone copied my home videos?"

Example:

Let's say you produced a "home video" of you and your family BBing on a gas grill in your back yard. You post this video on-line. Someone that sells gas grills sees the video, thinks that it is well done, copies the video, puts his/her logo on the video and puts it on his/her Gas Grill Web Site.

Sure, you can get an attorney to force them to remove the video from their site, but that could take years of litigation and cost you way more than you will collect. In the meantime the company sells it's assets to another company headquartered in Costa Rica owned by his wife. Then declares bankruptcy.

You SOL buddy. You won the case, spent thousands of $$, wasted several years of your life fighting something that could have been averted by placing a copyright or logo on your video. Sure it can be removed but the thief will probably move on looking for some other person that believes:

Why would anyone be interested to copy our videos?
How many of us need to watermark our videos anyway?
Is it a big deal if someone copied my home videos?

Food for thought.

Marty

I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY. NOTHING WRITTEN HERE SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVISE. ANY QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO THIS ISSUE SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO AN ATTORNEY WITH EXPERIENCE IN THIS FIELD.

Installed the same version from SoftOrbits home over the GOTD version and registered OK, it's a few bytes bigger, couple hrs newer and a little less buggy.

@Giovanni once again thank you for your insight and hard work on the research.
I decided to go with the video converter factory. Would you know if there is a site for watermarking photos?

Thanx so much 2 GIOVANNI - YES the WonderFox is working propper and at all => installation is done WITHOUT any hardware-linking!

So the dudes of SoftOrbits shall learn HOW the commuity accepts bugy and restricted stuff even or not.

I only notice about wrong registration message about Photo Stamp watermark activated. Give me a good laugh.

They must have use the same template interface to create this tool too but forgot to change all the words.

As lossy encoding is used nowadays everywhere each time you reencode a video e.g. for adding watermarks its quality gets worse and worse!

Does any normal person really beleive in getting rich by publishing videos?

I don't understand when people start talking about stuff like hating watermarks and wanting to remove them.... if an artist put them on their work, it is so that the tons of people who like to steal art and use it without permission or spread it all over facebook or tumblr and so on will at least know the source (or find it). Not to mention this is a program for making/adding watermarks, so comments should generally be about that (adding watermarks and how well does it add watermarks). I like that it has an option for partial or whole watermarks, so perhaps a person could add a watermark at the beginning and at the end. I probably wouldn't pay 100 to use it to protect my commercial work, however. Starving artist and all that. Already struggle to protect my work when so much gets stolen- tons of watermark removers out there. I'd like to see how well these watermarks would stand up against them.

Yes thanks to Giovanni for the link to WonderFox Video Watermark, However once downloaded my AV throws up an Unknown Heuristic virus error. This is probably a false positive so I ignored and went ahead with the installation and registration and all went well. Find it annoying though that a professional company would link to a potentially infected file be that the case or not.

What is being clumsy addressed in the initial comments and the purpose of this software is the notice of copyright, e.g., "© Copyright 2013 Doktor Thomas. All rights reserved." Protection, enforcement, registration, violation, theft, remediation and international recognition are areas of U.S. copyright law generally and widely misunderstood. Even attorneys not specialized in the area frequently are mistaken as to how and what works. This GAOTD software does not do these things; it allows notice only.

While articulating the steps for obtaining an enforceable copyright here might be appreciated by all, US law also disallows practicing law or dispensing legal advice without a license in the jurisdiction where the listener/reader resides (the number of licenses is obviously huge in a world wide readership). In the fashion of true protectionism and hard monopoly, the entire US legal community enforces a prohibition of this alleged criminal activity despite the fact that they themselves cannot define "the practice law". Their rule of thumb to measure practicing without a license is hardly more intuitive than, "if a lawyer does it, it must be the practice law." So don't use el baño without contacting your counsel because there is evidence that they do that too ... but you didn't hear it from me.

There are two options available (assuming you do not wish to attend law school)for persons concerned with enforceable copyright, hire an overpriced probably mediocre (US) attorney (thank you, Blue n Gold, the ABA loves you)in your area/situs/jurisdiction or search Amazon for a book on the subject. They carry everything from the obtuse generally-worthless-to-lay-persons school texts to paperback summary manuals. Read; learn; grow your mind. =>Understand US copyright. Warning: Google results are probably as unsound as following advice gleaned from "what they said" or other jailhouse lawyers.

In any event, it is not a violation of US law to advise those who have copyright problems, think they have copyright problems or any other legal issue are encouraged to contact an attorney who practices in the area of the problem located in the local area in which they reside. ©2013 All rights reserved.

It did the job with no big hassles for me (I've tried it on a couple of videos of mine though): yes, as Ashraf rightly noticed, this is a brand-new program full of bags (see its inability to properly add watermarks to multiple videos in batch).

So overall it's no bad as GAOTD but for 50 bucks you must do more dude!

Nevertheless, if you are clever, removing watermarks from videos is not impossible....

You can use the freeware "VirtualDub" for that or...

http://www.softorbits.com/photo-stamp-remover/articles/how-to-remove-watermark-from-video.html

LOL...that's funny...the same company on one hand makes a (buggy) GAOTD like this and on the other hand creates a program which does exactly the opposite!

So all in all I'm not sure how effective a software like this GAOTD could be for copyright protection, if the same company shows you how to remove watermarks from videos: what do you make of it, dudes?


BEST FREE ALTERNATIVES

http://www.advancedsourcecode.com/wavevideowater.asp
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Editors/AviSynth-Final.shtml + http://sourceforge.net/projects/watermarkplugin

See also:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/191496-Put-a-custom-watermark-on-your-video
http://gaizy.hubpages.com/hub/Tutorial-How-to-watermark-your-videos-with-Windows-Movie-Maker-WMM

But why not add DRM protection on your videos?

http://www.armjisoft.com/?page=flashownerguard#Description

And besides that, there is a PROMO on the net right now (available till tomorrow) concerning the excellent shareware "Wonderfox Video Watermark" which is far better than this (brand-new & buggy) GAOTD:

http://www.videoconverterfactory.com/video-watermark/giveaway/tipradar.html#.Ue-e_xhH7IV

My 2 cents for today's giveaway....

at #2 u need to read the law a photo is copyrighted as soon as taken with camera by the owner according to us. copyright law i suggest u go to your local law schools library and educate yourself.

I do not read comments any comments made in response to mine are subject to possibly having names posted automatically with prewritten reviews of user on my critic site

After reading Ashraf's review, I decided not to install this GOTD software which he said was extremely buggy.

Besides the bugs in the software, consider whether we need such software if we are just occasional home video makers.

How many videos do we create in one year?
Why would anyone be interested to copy our videos?
How many of us need to watermark our videos anyway?
Is it a big deal if someone copied my home videos?
Is not imitation the sincerest form of flattery?

I'm barely busy with videos, however, I will definitely not mess up those few that I have with “watermarks”!

Today again nothing for me – as (almost) always!

But that's okay, this keeps the hard disk clean. :D

HATE watermarks. Utterly LOATHE them.
A watermark remover would be better.
A watermark puts me OFF something not draws me to it

Ashraf’s review of this program as it being overpriced and extremely buggy gives me no confident in it.

However, for those of you desperate enough to use it is possibly worth viewing the following links regarding copyright.
Talks about copyright general and not just the UK.
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law
Copyright in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States
Universal Copyright including the US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Copyright_Convention

@n°3: that's the general principle. Unfortunately it is not true of all countries, though. In particular in the USA you have to apply for copyright (and pay a fee) to enjoy full protection. If you don't register, you are protected for a mere pittance. The USA is the only exception I am aware of, but it is sizable enough to be mentioned.

No2 you are wrong. In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office.

The merits of being able to identify your work and of this product aside, I just want to mention that just applying a watermark does not confer copyright. Using this product gives you no legal protection against illegal copying whatsoever, as it seems to imply.

If you want the protections of a copyright, you need to apply for a copyright. Just saying it's yours doesn't make it so.

Pros
*Add image and text watermarks
*Add multiple watermarks to videos
*Supports batch processing
*Can show watermarks during whole video or only parts of video
*Can output to same input format or convert to different output format

Cons
*Buggy
*Is free today for GOTD users but is normally overpriced: $49.95 of personal use, $99.95 for business use

Final Verdict
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