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

Study and Implementation of Watermarking Algorithms

Water Making is the process of embedding data called a watermark into a multimedia object such that watermark can be detected or extracted later to make an assertion about the object. The object may be an audio, image or video. A copy of a digital image is identical to the original. This has in many instances, led to the use of digital content with malicious intent. One way to protect multimedia data against illegal recording and retransmission is to embed a signal, called digital signature or copyright label or watermark that authenticates the owner of the data. Data hiding, schemes to embed secondary data in digital media, have made considerable progress in recent years and attracted attention from both academia and industry. Techniques have been proposed for a variety of applications, including ownership protection, authentication and access control. Imperceptibility, robustness against moderate processing such as compression, and the ability to hide many bits are the basic but rat..

A study and some experimental work of digital image and video watermarking

The rapid growth of digitized media and the emergence of digital networks have created a pressing need for copyright protection and anonymous communications schemes. Digital watermarking (or data hiding in a more general term) is a kind of steganography technique by adding information into a digital data stream. Several most important watermarking schemes applied to multilevel and binary still images and digital videos were studied. They include schemes based on DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform), DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform), and fractal transforms. The question whether these invisible watermarking techniques can resolve the issue of rightful ownership of intellectual properties was discussed. The watermarking schemes were further studied from malicious attack point of view, which is considered an effective way to advance the watermarking techniques. In particular, the StirMark robustness tests based on geometrical distortion were carried out. A binary watermarking scheme applied in the DCT domain is presented in this research project. The effect of the binarization procedure necessarily encountered in dealing with binary document images is found so strong that most of conventional embedding schemes fail in dealing with watermarking of binary document images. Some particular measures have to be taken. The initial simulation results indicate that the proposed technique is promising though further efforts need to be made

High capacity data embedding schemes for digital media

High capacity image data hiding methods and robust high capacity digital audio watermarking algorithms are studied in this thesis. The main results of this work are the development of novel algorithms with state-of-the-art performance, high capacity and transparency for image data hiding and robustness, high capacity and low distortion for audio watermarking.En esta tesis se estudian y proponen diversos métodos de data hiding de imágenes y watermarking de audio de alta capacidad. Los principales resultados de este trabajo consisten en la publicación de varios algoritmos novedosos con rendimiento a la altura de los mejores métodos del estado del arte, alta capacidad y transparencia, en el caso de data hiding de imágenes, y robustez, alta capacidad y baja distorsión para el watermarking de audio.En aquesta tesi s'estudien i es proposen diversos mètodes de data hiding d'imatges i watermarking d'àudio d'alta capacitat. Els resultats principals d'aquest treball consisteixen en la publicació de diversos algorismes nous amb rendiment a l'alçada dels millors mètodes de l'estat de l'art, alta capacitat i transparència, en el cas de data hiding d'imatges, i robustesa, alta capacitat i baixa distorsió per al watermarking d'àudio.Societat de la informació i el coneixemen

Tatouage du flux compressé MPEG-4 AVC

La présente thèse aborde le sujet de tatouage du flux MPEG-4 AVC sur ses deux volets théoriques et applicatifs en considérant deux domaines applicatifs à savoir la protection du droit d auteur et la vérification de l'intégrité du contenu. Du point de vue théorique, le principal enjeu est de développer un cadre de tatouage unitaire en mesure de servir les deux applications mentionnées ci-dessus. Du point de vue méthodologique, le défi consiste à instancier ce cadre théorique pour servir les applications visées. La première contribution principale consiste à définir un cadre théorique pour le tatouage multi symboles à base de modulation d index de quantification (m-QIM). La règle d insertion QIM a été généralisée du cas binaire au cas multi-symboles et la règle de détection optimale (minimisant la probabilité d erreur à la détection en condition du bruit blanc, additif et gaussien) a été établie. Il est ainsi démontré que la quantité d information insérée peut être augmentée par un facteur de log2m tout en gardant les mêmes contraintes de robustesse et de transparence. Une quantité d information de 150 bits par minutes, soit environ 20 fois plus grande que la limite imposée par la norme DCI est obtenue. La deuxième contribution consiste à spécifier une opération de prétraitement qui permet d éliminer les impactes du phénomène du drift (propagation de la distorsion) dans le flux compressé MPEG-4 AVC. D abord, le problème a été formalisé algébriquement en se basant sur les expressions analytiques des opérations d encodage. Ensuite, le problème a été résolu sous la contrainte de prévention du drift. Une amélioration de la transparence avec des gains de 2 dB en PSNR est obtenueThe present thesis addresses the MPEG-4 AVC stream watermarking and considers two theoretical and applicative challenges, namely ownership protection and content integrity verification.From the theoretical point of view, the thesis main challenge is to develop a unitary watermarking framework (insertion/detection) able to serve the two above mentioned applications in the compressed domain. From the methodological point of view, the challenge is to instantiate this theoretical framework for serving the targeted applications. The thesis first main contribution consists in building the theoretical framework for the multi symbol watermarking based on quantization index modulation (m-QIM). The insertion rule is analytically designed by extending the binary QIM rule. The detection rule is optimized so as to ensure minimal probability of error under additive white Gaussian noise distributed attacks. It is thus demonstrated that the data payload can be increased by a factor of log2m, for prescribed transparency and additive Gaussian noise power. A data payload of 150 bits per minute, i.e. about 20 times larger than the limit imposed by the DCI standard, is obtained. The thesis second main theoretical contribution consists in specifying a preprocessing MPEG-4 AVC shaping operation which can eliminate the intra-frame drift effect. The drift represents the distortion spread in the compressed stream related to the MPEG encoding paradigm. In this respect, the drift distortion propagation problem in MPEG-4 AVC is algebraically expressed and the corresponding equations system is solved under drift-free constraints. The drift-free shaping results in gain in transparency of 2 dB in PSNREVRY-INT (912282302) / SudocSudocFranceF

Data hiding in images based on fractal modulation and diversity combining

The current work provides a new data-embedding infrastructure based on fractal modulation. The embedding problem is tackled from a communications point of view. The data to be embedded becomes the signal to be transmitted through a watermark channel. The channel could be the image itself or some manipulation of the image. The image self noise and noise due to attacks are the two sources of noise in this paradigm. At the receiver, the image self noise has to be suppressed, while noise due to the attacks may sometimes be predicted and inverted. The concepts of fractal modulation and deterministic self-similar signals are extended to 2-dimensional images. These novel techniques are used to build a deterministic bi-homogenous watermark signal that embodies the binary data to be embedded. The binary data to be embedded, is repeated and scaled with different amplitudes at each level and is used as the wavelet decomposition pyramid. The binary data is appended with special marking data, which is used during demodulation, to identify and correct unreliable or distorted blocks of wavelet coefficients. This specially constructed pyramid is inverted using the inverse discrete wavelet transform to obtain the self-similar watermark signal. In the data embedding stage, the well-established linear additive technique is used to add the watermark signal to the cover image, to generate the watermarked (stego) image. Data extraction from a potential stego image is done using diversity combining. Neither the original image nor the original binary sequence (or watermark signal) is required during the extraction. A prediction of the original image is obtained using a cross-shaped window and is used to suppress the image self noise in the potential stego image. The resulting signal is then decomposed using the discrete wavelet transform. The number of levels and the wavelet used are the same as those used in the watermark signal generation stage. A thresholding process similar to wavelet de-noising is used to identify whether a particular coefficient is reliable or not. A decision is made as to whether a block is reliable or not based on the marking data present in each block and sometimes corrections are applied to the blocks. Finally the selected blocks are combined based on the diversity combining strategy to extract the embedded binary data

Attention Driven Solutions for Robust Digital Watermarking Within Media

As digital technologies have dramatically expanded within the last decade, content recognition now plays a major role within the control of media. Of the current recent systems available, digital watermarking provides a robust maintainable solution to enhance media security. The two main properties of digital watermarking, imperceptibility and robustness, are complimentary to each other but by employing visual attention based mechanisms within the watermarking framework, highly robust watermarking solutions are obtainable while also maintaining high media quality. This thesis firstly provides suitable bottom-up saliency models for raw image and video. The image and video saliency algorithms are estimated directly from within the wavelet domain for enhanced compatibility with the watermarking framework. By combining colour, orientation and intensity contrasts for the image model and globally compensated object motion in the video model, novel wavelet-based visual saliency algorithms are provided. The work extends these saliency models into a unique visual attention-based watermarking scheme by increasing the watermark weighting parameter within visually uninteresting regions. An increased watermark robustness, up to 40%, against various filtering attacks, JPEG2000 and H.264/AVC compression is obtained while maintaining the media quality, verified by various objective and subjective evaluation tools. As most video sequences are stored in an encoded format, this thesis studies watermarking schemes within the compressed domain. Firstly, the work provides a compressed domain saliency model formulated directly within the HEVC codec, utilizing various coding decisions such as block partition size, residual magnitude, intra frame angular prediction mode and motion vector difference magnitude. Large computational savings, of 50% or greater, are obtained compared with existing methodologies, as the saliency maps are generated from partially decoded bitstreams. Finally, the saliency maps formulated within the compressed HEVC domain are studied within the watermarking framework. A joint encoder and a frame domain watermarking scheme are both proposed by embedding data into the quantised transform residual data or wavelet coefficients, respectively, which exhibit low visual salience

Audio Signal Processing Using Time-Frequency Approaches: Coding, Classification, Fingerprinting, and Watermarking

Audio signals are information rich nonstationary signals that play an important role in our day-to-day communication, perception of environment, and entertainment. Due to its non-stationary nature, time- or frequency-only approaches are inadequate in analyzing these signals. A joint time-frequency (TF) approach would be a better choice to efficiently process these signals. In this digital era, compression, intelligent indexing for content-based retrieval, classification, and protection of digital audio content are few of the areas that encapsulate a majority of the audio signal processing applications. In this paper, we present a comprehensive array of TF methodologies that successfully address applications in all of the above mentioned areas. A TF-based audio coding scheme with novel psychoacoustics model, music classification, audio classification of environmental sounds, audio fingerprinting, and audio watermarking will be presented to demonstrate the advantages of using time-frequency approaches in analyzing and extracting information from audio signals.</p

Data Hiding in Digital Video

With the rapid development of digital multimedia technologies, an old method which is called steganography has been sought to be a solution for data hiding applications such as digital watermarking and covert communication. Steganography is the art of secret communication using a cover signal, e.g., video, audio, image etc., whereas the counter-technique, detecting the existence of such as a channel through a statistically trained classifier, is called steganalysis. The state-of-the art data hiding algorithms utilize features; such as Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients, pixel values, motion vectors etc., of the cover signal to convey the message to the receiver side. The goal of embedding algorithm is to maximize the number of bits sent to the decoder side (embedding capacity) with maximum robustness against attacks while keeping the perceptual and statistical distortions (security) low. Data Hiding schemes are characterized by these three conflicting requirements: security against steganalysis, robustness against channel associated and/or intentional distortions, and the capacity in terms of the embedded payload. Depending upon the application it is the designer\u27s task to find an optimum solution amongst them. The goal of this thesis is to develop a novel data hiding scheme to establish a covert channel satisfying statistical and perceptual invisibility with moderate rate capacity and robustness to combat steganalysis based detection. The idea behind the proposed method is the alteration of Video Object (VO) trajectory coordinates to convey the message to the receiver side by perturbing the centroid coordinates of the VO. Firstly, the VO is selected by the user and tracked through the frames by using a simple region based search strategy and morphological operations. After the trajectory coordinates are obtained, the perturbation of the coordinates implemented through the usage of a non-linear embedding function, such as a polar quantizer where both the magnitude and phase of the motion is used. However, the perturbations made to the motion magnitude and phase were kept small to preserve the semantic meaning of the object motion trajectory. The proposed method is well suited to the video sequences in which VOs have smooth motion trajectories. Examples of these types could be found in sports videos in which the ball is the focus of attention and exhibits various motion types, e.g., rolling on the ground, flying in the air, being possessed by a player, etc. Different sports video sequences have been tested by using the proposed method. Through the experimental results, it is shown that the proposed method achieved the goal of both statistical and perceptual invisibility with moderate rate embedding capacity under AWGN channel with varying noise variances. This achievement is important as the first step for both active and passive steganalysis is the detection of the existence of covert channel. This work has multiple contributions in the field of data hiding. Firstly, it is the first example of a data hiding method in which the trajectory of a VO is used. Secondly, this work has contributed towards improving steganographic security by providing new features: the coordinate location and semantic meaning of the object