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Abstract — Last few years have witnessed rapid growth in enhancement and database linking etc. [2].
video coding technology. Among various standards, Growing popularity of video based applications such as
H.264/Advanced Video Codec (AVC) is found to be of Internet multimedia, wireless video, personal video recorders,
significant importance regarding reduced bandwidth, better video-on-demand, set-top box, videophone and
image quality and network friendliness. One of the current videoconferencing have a demand for much higher
fields of interest is to develop a system with authentication and compression to meet bandwidth criteria and best video quality
copyright protection methodology embedded within an as possible. Different video Encoder Decoders (CODECs)
efficient video codec. In this paper we first perform a survey have evolved to meet the current requirements of video
on available video watermarking techniques, feasibility study application based products. Among various available
on watermarking techniques meeting application specific standards H.264 / Advanced Video Codec (AVC) is becoming
criteria for H.264/AVC and then we perform a comparative an important alternative regarding reduced band width, better
analysis based on robustness and computational complexity of
image quality in terms of peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR)
different watermarking algorithms. 1
and network friendliness [26], but it requires higher
computational complexity.
Index Terms — Video Watermarking, H.264/AVC.
Different watermarking techniques have been proposed for
I. INTRODUCTION different video CODECs, but only a few works on
H.264/AVC can be found in the literature. H.264/AVC uses
High speed computer networks, the Internet and the World different transformation and block sizes than MPEG series, so
Wide Web have revolutionized the way in which digital data development of new algorithms is required to integrate robust
is distributed. The widespread and easy accesses to watermarking techniques for different profiles of H.264/AVC.
multimedia contents and possibility to make unlimited copy In section II we review the basics of digital watermarking,
without loss of considerable fidelity have motivated the need video watermarking terminologies and techniques. In Section
for digital rights management. Digital watermarking is a III we briefly discuss common video watermarking
technology that can serve this purpose. A large number of techniques. Comparative analyses between different
watermarking schemes have been proposed to hide copyright watermarking techniques are described in section IV. Finally
marks and other information in digital images, video, audio basics of H.264/AVC encoder are explained and applicability
and other multimedia objects [1, and references there in]. of different watermarking techniques in H.264/AVC is drawn
A watermark is a digital data embedded in multimedia in section V.
objects such that the watermark can be detected or extracted at
later times in order to make an assertion about the object. The
main purpose of digital watermarking is to embed information II. VIDEO WATERMARKING
imperceptibly and robustly in the host data. Typically the
watermark contains information about the origin, ownership, A. Digital watermarking:
destination, copy control, transaction etc. Potential Digital watermarking also known as watermark insertion or
applications of digital watermarking include transaction watermark embedding, represents the method of inserting
tracking, copy control, authentication, legacy system information into multimedia data also called original media or
cover media e.g. text, audio, image, video. The embedded
1 information or watermark can be a serial number or random
Sourav Bhattacharya, T. Chattopadhyay and Arpan Pal are with
Convergence Solutions Practice, Tata Consultancy Services Limited, Kolkata, number sequence, ownership identifiers, copyright messages,
India. control signals, transaction dates, information about the
E-mail: {sourav.bhattacharya, tanushyam.chattopadhyay, arpan.pal} creators of the work, bi-level or gray level images, text or
@tcs.com
other digital data formats. In the literature large number of text
lsb(c0 ) ≠ lsb(c1 ) . Such level-adjacent pairs are called In this section we shall discuss the comparative analysis
of different video watermarking techniques in Table 1. We
label-carrying VLC (lc-VLC). A covert data bit U i is shall use the following terminology in the table:
embedded into a frame by extracting eligible lc-VLC, R: Robustness; Rl: Reliability; I: Imperceptibility; P:
ci ∈ {c 0 } ∪ {c1} , and swapping a codeword, if necessary practicality; T: Time complexity; S: synchronization
recovery. We shall denote the measure of goodness using
such that to ensure lsb( ci ) = U i . This process does not the quantifiers Good (G), Acceptable (A), and Poor (P).
use any random key based component as a result of that this
TABLE 1
method is not robust against attacks.
In [24], Darmstaedter et al. proposed a data hiding Technique R Rl I P T
method (region based energy modification, RBEM), where SS A A G G G
data were embedded by manipulating the average energy or JAWS A A G G G
luminance intensities in sub-regions of each frame. This CR G G G P P
method achieves a high data capacity by embedding one bit CDMA A A G A A
into every 8 × 8 block, and error control coding is used to VLC P P G G G
ensure robustness. Here the data sequence U is directly RBEM A A G A A
embedded in the cover data. The concept of block TDC G G G A A
classification was introduced here. With the classification PW A A G A G
of blocks, this scheme can take the advantage of local 3D DFT G G G A A
spatial characteristics and adjust its embedding strategy to GOF G A G A G
improve imperceptibility and robustness criteria.
One of the first transformed domain video watermarking V. WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES APPLICABLE TO H.264
methods (TDC) was proposed by Cox et al. in [25]. The / AVC
authors proposed and stressed on the importance of H.264/AVC is becoming a popular video codec for its
embedding the watermark into perceptually significant better compression, picture quality and applicability to
components to increase robustness against signal processing portable electronic devices. So a H.264 video CODEC with
and lossy compression techniques. The watermark of length a suitable watermarking embedded in it is a good consumer
n was populated from a standard normal distribution apart electronics product in current scenario. We have already
from a binary PN sequence in order to enhance robustness. discussed about different watermarking techniques and
This method uses a non-blind approach for watermark compared their performances. Now we shall discuss about
detention. Detection is performed by transforming the an overview of H.264/AVC and then we shall discuss about
original and test frame in the DCT domain and correlating the applicability of different watermarking technology in
the difference vector with the expected watermark pattern. H.264/AVC.
A perceptual watermarking (PW) method explicitly We shall discuss the overview of H.264 CODEC with
model masking properties of the HVS and utilizes these help of a block diagram shown in Fig. 2 [27].
models to analyse video sequence or frames to embed The H.264 video encoder works as follows:
watermark in the optimal way. The five main properties of • Input image is captured.
the HSV namely, frequency sensitivity, luminance • Prediction cost is computed by exploiting temporal (P)
sensitivity, contrast masking, edge masking and temporal redundancy and spatial (I) redundancy.
masking can be exploited by video watermarking • Best prediction mode (temporal (P) or spatial (I)) is
techniques [29], [30]. selected by defining a minimizing function on the costs.
In [31] a 3D DFT based robust watermarking scheme • Residue is computed for the best prediction mode.
+ Entropy
Input video T Q Reorder
(YUV 4:2:0 Encoder
format) Best
Predictio +
n Mode
and Inter (P) NAL
block
size
F/ n-1 selection
(Reference)
Intra (I)
+
/
F n
(Reconstruct
De-blocking T-1 Q-1
Filter +
ed)