Digital rights management techniques for H.264 video

This work aims to present a number of low-complexity digital rights management (DRM) methodologies for the H.264 standard. Initially, requirements to enforce DRM are analyzed and understood. Based on these requirements, a framework is constructed which puts forth different possibilities that can be explored to satisfy the objective. To implement computationally efficient DRM methods, watermarking and content based copy detection are then chosen as the preferred methodologies. The first approach is based on robust watermarking which modifies the DC residuals of 4×4 macroblocks within I-frames. Robust watermarks are appropriate for content protection and proving ownership. Experimental results show that the technique exhibits encouraging rate-distortion (R-D) characteristics while at the same time being computationally efficient. The problem of content authentication is addressed with the help of two methodologies: irreversible and reversible watermarks. The first approach utilizes the highest frequency coefficient within 4×4 blocks of the I-frames after CAVLC en- tropy encoding to embed a watermark. The technique was found to be very effect- ive in detecting tampering. The second approach applies the difference expansion (DE) method on IPCM macroblocks within P-frames to embed a high-capacity reversible watermark. Experiments prove the technique to be not only fragile and reversible but also exhibiting minimal variation in its R-D characteristics. The final methodology adopted to enforce DRM for H.264 video is based on the concept of signature generation and matching. Specific types of macroblocks within each predefined region of an I-, B- and P-frame are counted at regular intervals in a video clip and an ordinal matrix is constructed based on their count. The matrix is considered to be the signature of that video clip and is matched with longer video sequences to detect copies within them. Simulation results show that the matching methodology is capable of not only detecting copies but also its location within a longer video sequence. Performance analysis depict acceptable false positive and false negative rates and encouraging receiver operating charac- teristics. Finally, the time taken to match and locate copies is significantly low which makes it ideal for use in broadcast and streaming applications

Robust drift-free bit-rate preserving H.264 watermarking

International audienceThis paper presents a novel method for open-loop watermarking of H.264/AVC bitstreams. Existing watermarking algorithms designed for previous encoders, such as MPEG-2 cannot be directly applied to H.264/AVC, as H.264/AVC implements numerous new features that were not considered in previous coders. In contrast to previous watermarking techniques for H.264/AVC bitstreams, which embed the information after the reconstruction loop and perform drift compensation, we propose a completely new intra-drift-free watermarking algorithm. The major design goals of this novel H.264/AVC watermarking algorithm are runtime-efficiency, high perceptual quality, (almost) no bit-rate increase and robustness to re-compression. The watermark is extremely runtime-efficiently embedded in the compressed domain after the reconstruction loop, i.e., all prediction results are reused. Nevertheless, intra-drift is avoided, as the watermark is embedded in such a way that the pixels used for the prediction are kept unchanged. Thus, there is no drift as the pixels being used in the intra-prediction process of H.264/AVC are not modified. For watermark detection, we use a two-stage cross-correlation. Our simulation results confirm that the proposed technique is robust against re-encoding and shows a negligible impact on both the bit-rate and the visual quality

A Robust Video Watermarking Scheme of H.264

[[abstract]]We present a video watermarking scheme which is robust to video coding standards H.264. The proposed scheme embeds watermark on all AC coefficients of 4Ã4 DCT blocks of I-frames. It integrates Watson's human visual system and the contents of 4Ã4 DCT blocks to determine the embedding strength. Since the high correlation of the video content within one scene, producing similar embedding strength, the scheme has the property of same watermarks for same scenes and different watermarks for different scenes. Thus, it can successfully resist the collusion attacks. Experiments validate that the proposed scheme has advantage of the invisibility, and it is robust to collusion attacks as well as H.264 compression.[[sponsorship]]IEEE Taipei Section; National Science Council; Ministry of Education; Tamkang University; Asia University; Providence University; The University of Aizu; Lanzhou University[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencetkucampus]]淡水校園[[conferencedate]]20091203~20091205[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Taipei, Taiwa

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

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

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