The present invention relates to digital watermarking systems and methods. In a first implementation, so-called movie studio rough-cuts are watermarked to provide a forensic tracking clue or to provide security for distributed rough-cuts. In another implementation, a watermark is determined for a compressed video object. The watermark is compressed as an object and the watermarked object is then associated with the compressed video object. The two separate objects are provided to a rendering device, which after decompressing both objects, embeds the watermark in the video prior to rendering.