A hybrid digital watermarking system for video authentication includes an authenticated acquisition subsystem for digitally watermarking video data and a video management subsystem in signal communication with the authenticated acquisition subsystem for verifying the digitally watermarked video data, where the authenticated acquisition subsystem may include a watermarking device for applying each of an identity signature and a control signature to the video data within a hybrid digital watermark, and the hybrid digital watermark may achieve progressively varying robustness by means of error-correcting signature coding and/or rate-distortion guided bit embedding.