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

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

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

Digital image watermarking: its formal model, fundamental properties and possible attacks

While formal definitions and security proofs are well established in some fields like cryptography and steganography, they are not as evident in digital watermarking research. A systematic development of watermarking schemes is desirable, but at present their development is usually informal, ad hoc, and omits the complete realization of application scenarios. This practice not only hinders the choice and use of a suitable scheme for a watermarking application, but also leads to debate about the state-of-the-art for different watermarking applications. With a view to the systematic development of watermarking schemes, we present a formal generic model for digital image watermarking. Considering possible inputs, outputs, and component functions, the initial construction of a basic watermarking model is developed further to incorporate the use of keys. On the basis of our proposed model, fundamental watermarking properties are defined and their importance exemplified for different image applications. We also define a set of possible attacks using our model showing different winning scenarios depending on the adversary capabilities. It is envisaged that with a proper consideration of watermarking properties and adversary actions in different image applications, use of the proposed model would allow a unified treatment of all practically meaningful variants of watermarking schemes

On the data hiding theory and multimedia content security applications

This dissertation is a comprehensive study of digital steganography for multimedia content protection. With the increasing development of Internet technology, protection and enforcement of multimedia property rights has become a great concern to multimedia authors and distributors. Watermarking technologies provide a possible solution for this problem. The dissertation first briefly introduces the current watermarking schemes, including their applications in video,, image and audio. Most available embedding schemes are based on direct Spread Sequence (SS) modulation. A small value pseudo random signature sequence is embedded into the host signal and the information is extracted via correlation. The correlation detection problem is discussed at the beginning. It is concluded that the correlator is not optimum in oblivious detection. The Maximum Likelihood detector is derived and some feasible suboptimal detectors are also analyzed. Through the calculation of extraction Bit Error Rate (BER), it is revealed that the SS scheme is not very efficient due to its poor host noise suppression. The watermark domain selection problem is addressed subsequently. Some implications on hiding capacity and reliability are also studied. The last topic in SS modulation scheme is the sequence selection. The relationship between sequence bandwidth and synchronization requirement is detailed in the work. It is demonstrated that the white sequence commonly used in watermarking may not really boost watermark security. To address the host noise suppression problem, the hidden communication is modeled as a general hypothesis testing problem and a set partitioning scheme is proposed. Simulation studies and mathematical analysis confirm that it outperforms the SS schemes in host noise suppression. The proposed scheme demonstrates improvement over the existing embedding schemes. Data hiding in audio signals are explored next. The audio data hiding is believed a more challenging task due to the human sensitivity to audio artifacts and advanced feature of current compression techniques. The human psychoacoustic model and human music understanding are also covered in the work. Then as a typical audio perceptual compression scheme, the popular MP3 compression is visited in some length. Several schemes, amplitude modulation, phase modulation and noise substitution are presented together with some experimental results. As a case study, a music bitstream encryption scheme is proposed. In all these applications, human psychoacoustic model plays a very important role. A more advanced audio analysis model is introduced to reveal implications on music understanding. In the last part, conclusions and future research are presented

Image watermarking based on the space/spatial-frequency analysis and Hermite functions expansion

International audienceAn image watermarking scheme that combines Hermite functions expansion and space/spatial-frequency analysis is proposed. In the first step, the Hermite functions expansion is employed to select busy regions for watermark embedding. In the second step, the space/spatial-frequency representation and Hermite functions expansion are combined to design the imperceptible watermark, using the host local frequency content. The Hermite expansion has been done by using the fast Hermite projection method. Recursive realization of Hermite functions significantly speeds up the algorithms for regions selection and watermark design. The watermark detection is performed within the space/spatial-frequency domain. The detection performance is increased due to the high information redundancy in that domain in comparison with the space or frequency domains, respectively. The performance of the proposed procedure has been tested experimentally for different watermark strengths, i.e., for different values of the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). The proposed approach provides high detection performance even for high PSNR values. It offers a good compromise between detection performance (including the robustness to a wide variety of common attacks) and imperceptibility

Towards Optimal Copyright Protection Using Neural Networks Based Digital Image Watermarking

In the field of digital watermarking, digital image watermarking for copyright protection has attracted a lot of attention in the research community. Digital watermarking contains varies techniques for protecting the digital content. Among all those techniques,Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) provides higher image imperceptibility and robustness. Over the years, researchers have been designing watermarking techniques with robustness in mind, in order for the watermark to be resistant against any image processing techniques. Furthermore, the requirements of a good watermarking technique includes a tradeoff between robustness, image quality (imperceptibility) and capacity. In this paper, we have done an extensive literature review for the existing DWT techniques and those combined with other techniques such as Neural Networks. In addition to that, we have discuss the contribution of Neural Networks in copyright protection. Finally we reached our goal in which we identified the research gaps existed in the current watermarking schemes. So that, it will be easily to obtain an optimal techniques to make the watermark object robust to attacks while maintaining the imperceptibility to enhance the copyright protection