Progressive watermark decoding on a distributed computing platform

A method of progressive digital watermark decoding comprising:

• in a client, receiving a watermarked media signal;
• quantizing the watermark media signal into two or more levels of detail;
• progressively sending the quantized media signal to a watermark decoding server, starting with sending quantized data represented with a first set of quantization levels, and progressively sending more detailed versions of the quantized media signal represented with increasingly more quantization levels than the first set to reduce the bandwidth needed between the client and server to decode a digital watermark message successfully from the media signal on the server.

A method of efficient digital watermark decoding comprising:

• receiving a watermarked media signal;
• performing a lossy compression of the watermarked media signal that discards part of the media signal information, yet leaves a residual media signal from which the digital watermark is decoded;
• extracting a digital watermark message from the residual media signal.

A watermark decoding server method comprising:

• receiving a pre-filtered image block and a watermark decoding request from a client, where pre-filtering on the client has reduced an image to an estimate of a digital watermark signal;
• and
• performing watermark detection on the pre-filtered block, including reporting a detection result to the client to regulate requests for decoding additional blocks from the client.