trueonframe

Trueonframe is a term used in discussions of video content provenance and frame-level authenticity. In this context, trueonframe refers to approaches that aim to establish the integrity and origin of individual frames within a video, rather than only the file as a whole. It is not a formal standard, and definitions or implementations vary across researchers and industry practitioners.

Conceptually, trueonframe combines techniques from frame-by-frame analysis with cryptographic methods to create an auditable record of video frames. Common elements include computing a digest or hash for each frame (often a perceptual hash that tolerates minor edits), and then linking these digests in a chain or tree structure. This frame-level digest sequence can be digitally signed using a private key, enabling later verification with a corresponding public key. Some approaches also employ robust watermarking to embed identifiers within frames so that the provenance information remains detectable after common processing like compression or transcoding.

Applications of trueonframe concepts include broadcast monitoring, journalism verification, digital forensics, licensing and rights management, and archival preservation. The goal is to detect tampering, frame substitutions, reordering, or other integrity breaches and to provide provenance trails for specific frames.

Limitations and challenges include computational overhead, potential privacy and surveillance concerns, reliance on trusted signing and key management, and codec- or format-specific variability that can affect frame signatures. Because there is no universally adopted specification, interoperability between systems using trueonframe-like methods remains limited.