A video watermarking scheme based on motion
vectors and mode selection
WANG Pei
College of Mathematics, science &
information
Shanghai Normal University
Shanghai, China
peiwang@shnu.edu.cn
*ZHENG Zhendong
College of Mathematics, science &
information
Shanghai Normal University
Shanghai, China
dongdongtoyou@126.com
LI Li
College of Mathematics, science &
information
Shanghai Normal University
Shanghai, China
lilyxuan@shnu.edu.cn
Abstract—In this paper, a video watermarking technique is
proposed to hide copyright information in H.264 motion vectors.
In this method, watermark is embedded in the motion vectors,
and the region of motion vector is restricted to hide
watermarking information. In order to obtain the good
watermarked video quality, intra mode can be used to encode
those macroblocks badly affected by restricting the region of the
chosen motion vectors in inter mode. The watermark can be
easily retrieved by the encoding mode of the macroblocks or the
region of its motion vectors. The experimental results
demonstrate that the video quality is almost the same as that of
the original. The increase of bit rate is less than 1%. The
proposed method keeps the excellences of hiding watermark by
using the region of motion vectors. The capacity of watermark
can be increased by choosing more macroblocks to the
watermarks.
Keywords- video, watermark, motion vector, mode selection,
H.264
I. INTRODUCTION
Digital videos become more and more popular. Now we
can easily download any video we want from internet.
Meanwhile, the illegal uses and distribution also grow as well.
It also arise author problems such as users can copy vast
amount of digital data at will for their own use. Even piratical
DVD sells everywhere. The digital watermark
]1[
is an effective
method of protecting copyright of digital contents. It is a logo
belongs to the owner and watermarking is the technique which
is created for protecting the copyright. Digital watermark can
become an evidence of copyright infringement.
There are many particular characters in video still
compared with image. The character of motion is one of the
most important characters. In video motion vector indicates the
motion of every macroblock. Therefore embedding watermark
in motion vectors could be a method to protect copyright.
Kutter
]2[
first proposed a video watermarking scheme in
motion vectors. In order to simplify the extraction process of
watermark, only one macroblock was chosen to embed
watermark. The parity of motion vectors was used to embed
watermark. For example, odd abscissa of motion vectors
indicated 1 in binary system and even one indicated 0. So
motion vectors which were used to embed watermark only
need be modified slightly according to the watermarking
information. Jun Zhang
]3[
proposed a video watermarking
technique to hide copyright information in MPEG motion
vectors. In this method, watermark was embedded in larger
value motion vectors, especially in the less phase angle
changed component. This principal was used to choose the
motion vectors which would be used to embed watermarking
information. The embedding scheme was similar to the method
of [1]. In [4], scramble operation and permutation were used
before embedding the watermarking information. The
parameters used in these operations were kept for security
considerations. In this paper, parity of motion vectors was also
used to embed watermark. Meanwhile, there are many
schemes
]9[~]5[
which improve the scheme of embedding
watermark by the parity of motion vectors.
The region information of motion vectors also can be used
to embed watermark. In [10], a novel video watermarking
scheme was proposed. In motion estimation of H.264, the
search region of macroblcks which were used to embed
watermark was restricted in particular area. For example, the
case that the matching macroblock was in the left region of
current macroblock indicates 1. And 0 can be embedded if the
matching macroblock was in the right region of current
macroblock. But there will be a special case that the current
macroblock can’t find a good matching macroblock in the
region we restrict. In this case, the bit rate will increase more,
and the video quality is likely to decrease. So if the case
occurs, the intra mode can be used instead of inter mode.
II. T
HE PRINCIPAL FOR WATERMARK EMBEDDING
H.264 is the newest video compression standard, which
meets the growing need for higher compression of moving
pictures for various applications such as videoconferencing,
digital storage media, television broadcasting, internet
streaming, and telecommunication. Compared with other video
compression, H.264 has higher compression, higher video
quality and much higher calculate complexity. Because of the
character of high compression, if we use traditional
watermarking scheme, it is likely that the watermarks we
embedded are regarded as redundancy by H.264 and the
* Corresponding author
Foundation item: This work is Supported by Innovation Program of
Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, under search grant number
08YZ75
2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering
978-0-7695-3336-0/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSSE.2008.306
233
2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering
978-0-7695-3336-0/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSSE.2008.306
233