Fast watermarking of MPEG-1/2 streams using compressed-domain perceptual embedding and a generalized correlator detector

A novel technique is proposed for watermarking of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 compressed video streams. The proposed scheme is applied directly in the domain of MPEG-1 system streams and MPEG-2 program streams (multiplexed streams). Perceptual models are used during the embedding process in order to avoid degradation of the video quality. The watermark is detected without the use of the original video sequence. A modified correlation-based detector is introduced that applies nonlinear preprocessing before correlation. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed scheme is able to withstand several common attacks. The resulting watermarking system is very fast and therefore suitable for copyright protection of compressed video

Spread spectrum-based video watermarking algorithms for copyright protection

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2263 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Digital technologies know an unprecedented expansion in the last years. The consumer can now benefit from hardware and software which was considered state-of-the-art several years ago. The advantages offered by the digital technologies are major but the same digital technology opens the door for unlimited piracy. Copying an analogue VCR tape was certainly possible and relatively easy, in spite of various forms of protection, but due to the analogue environment, the subsequent copies had an inherent loss in quality. This was a natural way of limiting the multiple copying of a video material. With digital technology, this barrier disappears, being possible to make as many copies as desired, without any loss in quality whatsoever. Digital watermarking is one of the best available tools for fighting this threat. The aim of the present work was to develop a digital watermarking system compliant with the recommendations drawn by the EBU, for video broadcast monitoring. Since the watermark can be inserted in either spatial domain or transform domain, this aspect was investigated and led to the conclusion that wavelet transform is one of the best solutions available. Since watermarking is not an easy task, especially considering the robustness under various attacks several techniques were employed in order to increase the capacity/robustness of the system: spread-spectrum and modulation techniques to cast the watermark, powerful error correction to protect the mark, human visual models to insert a robust mark and to ensure its invisibility. The combination of these methods led to a major improvement, but yet the system wasn't robust to several important geometrical attacks. In order to achieve this last milestone, the system uses two distinct watermarks: a spatial domain reference watermark and the main watermark embedded in the wavelet domain. By using this reference watermark and techniques specific to image registration, the system is able to determine the parameters of the attack and revert it. Once the attack was reverted, the main watermark is recovered. The final result is a high capacity, blind DWr-based video watermarking system, robust to a wide range of attacks.BBC Research & Developmen

A contrast-sensitive reversible visible image watermarking technique

A reversible (also called lossless, distortion-free, or invertible) visible watermarking scheme is proposed to satisfy the applications, in which the visible watermark is expected to combat copyright piracy but can be removed to losslessly recover the original image. We transparently reveal the watermark image by overlapping it on a user-specified region of the host image through adaptively adjusting the pixel values beneath the watermark, depending on the human visual system-based scaling factors. In order to achieve reversibility, a reconstruction/ recovery packet, which is utilized to restore the watermarked area, is reversibly inserted into non-visibly-watermarked region. The packet is established according to the difference image between the original image and its approximate version instead of its visibly watermarked version so as to alleviate its overhead. For the generation of the approximation, we develop a simple prediction technique that makes use of the unaltered neighboring pixels as auxiliary information. The recovery packet is uniquely encoded before hiding so that the original watermark pattern can be reconstructed based on the encoded packet. In this way, the image recovery process is carried out without needing the availability of the watermark. In addition, our method adopts data compression for further reduction in the recovery packet size and improvement in embedding capacity. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme compared to the existing methods

Robusna procedura za umetanje vodenog žiga u sliku zasnovana na Hermitovoj projekcijskoj metodi

A procedure for combined image watermarking and compression, based on the Hermite projection method is proposed. The Hermite coefficients obtained by using the Hermite expansion are used for watermark embedding. The image can be efficiently reconstructed by using a set of Hermite coefficients that is quite smaller than the number of original ones. Hence, the watermark embedding is actually done in the compressed domain, while maintaining still high image quality (measured by high PSNR). The efficiency of the proposed procedure is proven experimentally, showing high robustness even for very strong standard attacks. Moreover, the method is robust not only to the standard attacks, but to the geometrical attacks, as well. The proposed approach can be suitable for different copyright and ownership protection purposes, especially in real-applications that require image compression, such as multimedia and Internet applications, remote sensing and satellite imaging.U radu je predložena procedura za umetanje vodenog žiga u sliku i kompresiju slike zasnovana na Hermitovoj projekcijskoj metodi. Odgovarajući koeficijenti, dobiveni kao rezultat primjene razvoja slike u red Hermitovih funkcija, korišteni su za umetanje vodenog žiga watermark). S obzirom na to da se slika može efikasno rekonstruirati korištenjem znatno manjeg broja Hermitovih koeficijenata u odnosu na broj originalnih koeficijenata slike, umetanje vodenog žiga zapravo je provedeno u domeni kompresije, uz očuvanje visoke kvalitete slike (velika vrijednost PSNR). Učinkovitost predložene procedure ispitana je eksperimentalno i pokazuje značajnu otpornost na uobičajene napade. Osim uobičajenih, procedura pokazuje robusnost i na geometrijske napade. Predloženi pristup može biti korišten u različitim aplikacijama za zaštitu autorskih prava, naročito u aplikacijama koje ujedno zahtijevaju i kompresiju slike, kao što su multimedijske i internetske aplikacije, daljinsko očitavanje podataka i satelitska snimanja

Fast fallback watermark detection using perceptual hashes

Forensic watermarking is often used to enable the tracing of digital pirates that leak copyright-protected videos. However, existing watermarking methods have a limited robustness and may be vulnerable to targeted attacks. Our previous work proposed a fallback detection method that uses secondary watermarks rather than the primary watermarks embedded by existing methods. However, the previously proposed fallback method is slow and requires access to all watermarked videos. This paper proposes to make the fallback watermark detection method faster using perceptual hashes instead of uncompressed secondary watermark signals. These perceptual hashes can be calculated prior to detection, such that the actual detection process is sped up with a factor of approximately 26,000 to 92,000. In this way, the proposed method tackles the main criticism about practical usability of the slow fallback method. The fast detection comes at the cost of a modest decrease in robustness, although the fast fallback detection method can still outperform the existing primary watermark method. In conclusion, the proposed method enables fast and more robust detection of watermarks that were embedded by existing watermarking methods

Asymmetric Watermarking Scheme Based on Shuffling

AbstractIn this paper, a novel asymmetric watermarking scheme is proposed. Both the user side watermark and copyright owner's one are generated from the copyright owner's private keys, and the watermark detection can be finished either by public watermark or the copyright owner's private one. Given the public watermark, it is impossible to guess or remove the embedded watermark. Performance of the proposed scheme is studied and the experimental results against removal attack and Jpeg compression show good robustness of proposed scheme