The first question that rises is…
Well, there are various reasons for that:
- Ownership: The person wants to show that the media belongs to him, and to prevent stealing; simply put, Intellectual Property Protection.
- Advertising: Someone wants others to know about a product/website/software etc…
- Trial Software: A media editing software might add a watermark if the software is a trial version, and has not yet been purchased
This is what I think of it...Blah, blah,blah…
The reasons are galore. But, just one statement outweighs them all, and that is… 
You can always crop the media, be it video or image, to edit out the watermark, but that doesn’t exactly give you wonderful results now, does it? Also, sometimes the watermark is placed in vital positions such that it’s impossible to crop the media to remove them.
We, being used to ~perfection, can simply not accept something that has been chopped off at the borders. What we need is the same video sans the watermark.For us nothing should change, be it quality or size or whatever parameters you keep. That is exactly what this tutorial will you here.
Now the tools we would require are:
- VirtualDub (version 1.6.18) is what I’ve used.
- De-logo Filter (Install by copying the delogo.vdf file to your VirtualDub plugins directory, typically C:program FilesVirtualDubplugins)
- MS Paint or similar photo editing program like photo shop, paint Shop Pro, etc…
Now let us begin…
“How do we remove these Watermarks?”
Start up VirtualDub and load the video file to be edited by clicking on “File > Open video File” …
The video file formats supported are {avi, divx, mpg, mpeg, mpv, m1v, dat, anim}. Once the file is loaded, click on “File > File Information”… Note down the size of the video, and click “OK”. UImthge given example it is (352*256).
The next step is to create three images vital for the watermark removal process.
1.) The first image is a simple blank one of the same size as of the video (i.e., 352*256 in the given example).
Note: I used MS Paint for this. You can very well utilize any image editing software…
Open a new instance of MS Paint, and click on “Image > Attributes” (Ctrl+E)…
Enter the dimensions noted for the video, in pixels, and press “OK”. Name the file as frame 1 and save it as a bitmap image (.BMP file).
2.) For the second image, go to VitualDub window, move the slider to get a good clean hot of the watermark on a dark background. Once obtained, click on “Video > Copy source frame to clipboard”.
Now in MS Paint click Edit and Paste (ctrl+V)
Save the image as a bitmap (.BMP file) at the same place as frame 1, and name it as frame 2.
3.) The final image needed to remove the logo, is created by colouring the logo RED. Open frame 2. bmp in MS Paint, and zoom onto the watermark as much as possible.
Now replace the logo pixels with Red colour. If you are not sure whether you have selected the right colour, click on “Colors > Edit Colors”…and select a custom color with the following properties (shown ion Red box), click on “Add to Custom Colors” and click “OK”. It is important that the colour selected is Red, as the de-logo filter will not accept the image otherwise.
Now colour the logo pixels with Red colour as shown in the image below.
When zoomed out, the final image will look like as shown below. Name this file as analysisframe and save it as a bitmap (.BMP file), at the same location as frame 1 and frame 2.
Now get back to VirtualDub, click “File > Close Video File”…
Now click “File > then Open Video File … Now browse to the location where you’ve saved frame 1. bmp. Select the file, and Click “OK”.
Now click “Video > Filters”…
This will open the Filters box.
There click on “Add” (Red box), to open the Add Filter box. Now click on “Load”… button to browse and select the de-logo filtr that you’ve downloaded. Once selected, the filter will show up in your Add Filter box, as shown in the blue selection band below. Select it, and click on “OK” twice to close the filter boxes.
Now the filter has been loaded. The filter configuration box will open, as shown in Image below. Now load the analysisframe. bmp file created earlier, in the Analyse box (Red box) by clicking on the “Load” button and browsing to select the file. Now click on “show Preview” button at the bottom (Blue box) to show a preview of the frame being edited. Next click on “Sample frame button (green box). Now click on the “forward” button in the preview frame (orange box), and again click on the “Sample frame”button.
After finishing the previous step, save the mask properties, highlighted below in the red box, by clicking the “Save as”… buttons. Next move the “Alpha to repair slider” (blue box) to the left, until it says 0 (zero). Now, with the preview window still showing, adjust the “DeBlend shift” and “DeBlend falloff” sliders,until the logo disappears. (I kept the DeBlend shift slider at 0 (zero), and adjusted the falloff slider to achieve my result). Now click on the “close” button below (orange box).
Now that the sample frame has been de-watermarked, we now have do the same to the complete video,Click on “File > Open video File”… and open the video file to be de-watermarked. Now by moving the slider, see in what frames the watermark exists.In my case the logo starts at frame 0 and ends at frames 12529.Now,click on “Video > Filters”… Click on “Delogo” and on “Configure”… (red box) to open the filter settings window.
In the Delogo configuration window, set the frames you want to remove the logo from, (i.e., 0 -12529), as shon in Image below, and click on the “close” button (blue box).
Now if the logo appears and disappears from the video at certain frames, just note down where it appears and disappears. So, if the logo is present only in the frame ranges 50-1000,and then from 2000-3500, then enter both these ranges in the red box in the Image above, i.e., (50-1000, 2000 3500).Now without altering any other settings, click the “Close” button (blue box). Press “OK” in the next window, and you have the logo-less video.
The next step is to save your new video onto your hard drive.Click on “Video > Compression”…
