REAL-TIME VIDEO WATERMARKING FOR COPYRIGHT PROTECTION BASED ON HUMAN PERCEPTION

There is a need for real-time copyright logo insertion in emerging applications, such as Internet protocol television (IPTV). This situation arises in IP-TV and digital TV broadcasting when video residing in a server has to be broadcast by different stations and under different broadcasting rights. Embedded systems that are involved in broadcasting need to have embedded copyright protection. Existing works are targeted towards invisible watermarking, not useful for logo insertion. MPEG-4 is the mainstream exchangeable video format in the Internet today because it has higher and flexible compression rate, lower bit rate, and higher efficiency while superior visual quality.The main steps for MPEG-4 are color space conversion and sampling, DCT and its inverse (IDCT), quantization, zigzag scanning, motion estimation, and entropy coding. In this work a watermarking algorithm that performs the broadcaster\u27s logo insertion as watermark in the DCT domain is been presented. The robustness of DCT watermarking arises from the fact that if an attack tries to remove watermarking at mid frequencies, it will risk degrading the fidelity of the image\video because some perceptive details are at mid frequencies. The suggested methods has implemented in matlab

Robust Video Watermarking Scheme Based on Intra-Coding Process in MPEG-2 Style

The proposed scheme implemented a semi blind digital watermarking method for video exploiting MPEG-2 standard. The watermark is inserted into selected high frequency coefficients of plain types of discrete cosine transform blocks instead of edge and texture blocks during intra coding process. The selection is essential because the error in such type of blocks is less sensitive to human eyes as compared to other categories of blocks. Therefore, the perceptibility of watermarked video does not degraded sharply. Visual quality is also maintained as motion vectors used for generating the motion compensated images are untouched during the entire watermarking process. Experimental results revealed that the scheme is not only robust to re-compression attack, spatial synchronization attacks like cropping, rotation but also strong to temporal synchronization attacks like frame inserting, deleting, swapping and averaging. The superiority of the anticipated method is obtaining the best sturdiness results contrast to the recently delivered schemes

FPGA Prototyping of a Watermarking Algorithm for MPEG-4

In the immediate future, multimedia product distribution through the Internet will become main stream. However, it can also have the side effect of unauthorized duplication and distribution of multimedia products. That effect could be a critical challenge to the legal ownership of copyright and intellectual property. Many schemes have been proposed to address these issues; one is digital watermarking which is appropriate for image and video copyright protection. Videos distributed via the Internet must be processed by compression for low bit rate, due to bandwidth limitations. The most widely adapted video compression standard is MPEG-4. Discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain watermarking is a secure algorithm which could survive video compression procedures and, most importantly, attacks attempting to remove the watermark, with a visibly degraded video quality result after the watermark attacks. For a commercial broadcasting video system, real-time response is always required. For this reason, an FPGA hardware implementation is studied in this work. This thesis deals with video compression, watermarking algorithms and their hardware implementation with FPGAs. A prototyping VLSI architecture will implement video compression and watermarking algorithms with the FPGA. The prototype is evaluated with video and watermarking quality metrics. Finally, it is seen that the video qualities of the watermarking at the uncompressed vs. the compressed domain are only 1dB of PSNR lower. However, the cost of compressed domain watermarking is the complexity of drift compensation for canceling the drifting effect

Comparative evaluation of video watermarking techniques in the uncompressed domain

Thesis (MScEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Electronic watermarking is a method whereby information can be imperceptibly embedded into electronic media, while ideally being robust against common signal manipulations and intentional attacks to remove the embedded watermark. This study evaluates the characteristics of uncompressed video watermarking techniques in terms of visual characteristics, computational complexity and robustness against attacks and signal manipulations. The foundations of video watermarking are reviewed, followed by a survey of existing video watermarking techniques. Representative techniques from different watermarking categories are identified, implemented and evaluated. Existing image quality metrics are reviewed and extended to improve their performance when comparing these video watermarking techniques. A new metric for the evaluation of inter frame flicker in video sequences is then developed. A technique for possibly improving the robustness of the implemented discrete Fourier transform technique against rotation is then proposed. It is also shown that it is possible to reduce the computational complexity of watermarking techniques without affecting the quality of the original content, through a modified watermark embedding method. Possible future studies are then recommended with regards to further improving watermarking techniques against rotation.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: ’n Elektroniese watermerk is ’n metode waardeur inligting onmerkbaar in elektroniese media vasgelê kan word, met die doel dat dit bestand is teen algemene manipulasies en doelbewuste pogings om die watermerk te verwyder. In hierdie navorsing word die eienskappe van onsaamgeperste video watermerktegnieke ondersoek in terme van visuele eienskappe, berekeningskompleksiteit en weerstandigheid teen aanslae en seinmanipulasies. Die onderbou van video watermerktegnieke word bestudeer, gevolg deur ’n oorsig van reedsbestaande watermerktegnieke. Verteenwoordigende tegnieke vanuit verskillende watermerkkategorieë word geïdentifiseer, geïmplementeer en geëvalueer. Bestaande metodes vir die evaluering van beeldkwaliteite word bestudeer en uitgebrei om die werkverrigting van die tegnieke te verbeter, spesifiek vir die vergelyking van watermerktegnieke. ’n Nuwe stelsel vir die evaluering van tussenraampie flikkering in video’s word ook ontwikkel. ’n Tegniek vir die moontlike verbetering van die geïmplementeerde diskrete Fourier transform tegniek word voorgestel om die tegniek se bestandheid teen rotasie te verbeter. Daar word ook aangetoon dat dit moontlik is om die berekeningskompleksiteit van watermerktegnieke te verminder, sonder om die kwaliteit van die oorspronklike inhoud te beïnvloed, deur die gebruik van ’n verbeterde watermerkvasleggingsmetode. Laastens word aanbevelings vir verdere navorsing aangaande die verbetering van watermerktegnieke teen rotasie gemaak