Real-Time

Compressed-
Domain Video
Watermarking
Resistance to
Geometric
Distortions
Liyun Wang, Hefei Ling, Fuhao Zou, and Zhengding Lu
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
D
igital watermarking has been an
important technique for the
copyright protection that embeds
copyright information into the
digital works. In video watermarking, the water-
mark can be added either to uncompressed data
or compressed video streams. Practical video
storage and distribution systems store and
transmit the video sequences in compressed
format, such as using a video on demand
(VoD) service system. In these cases, the water-
mark should be embedded into the compressed
video data to avoid the process of fully decod-
ing and encoding.
The geometric attacks in videos can be eas-
ily implemented by using a nonlinear editor.
However, they are difficult to handle because
they can desynchronize the watermark infor-
mation. Besides resisting geometric distor-
tions, most video watermarking applications
require the watermark to be embedded and
detected in real time. This article focuses on
the video watermarking used for copyright
protection in VoD applications, where both
real-time performance and resistance to geo-
metric distortions are important require-
ments. (See the Related Work in Digital
Watermarking sidebar for previous research.)
Because the histogram shape of the low-
frequency subband of the discrete wavelet
transform (DWT) is invariant to rotation, scal-
ing, and other geometric distortions, we pro-
pose a method to embed the watermark into
histogram bins of frames in the one-level
DWT domain. The video data are partially
decoded to obtain block discrete cosine trans-
form (DCT) coefficients. Which are subse-
quently used to construct one-level DWT. To
lower the computational complexity, we use
a fast intertransformation between one-level
DWT and block DCTs. Thus, our method can
resist many geometric distortions and meet
the real-time requirement.
The main contributions of this work are as
follows. First, we have proposed a geometrically
invariant watermarking method by exploiting
the fact that the histogram shape of the low-
frequency subband in DWT domain is insensi-
tive to various geometric distortions. Second,
we use a fast intertransformation to obtain
the DWT coefficients directly from the com-
pressed data instead of using the traditional
method that first decompresses the block
DCTs of frames into pixel data and then applies
DWT to these data. Thus, we significantly re-
duce the computational cost and meet the
real-time requirement.
Basic Principles
Compared with DCT, the Wavelet transform
is closer to the human visual system (HVS)
becuase it splits the input image into several
statistically frequency bands that can be pro-
cessed independently. DWT also causes fewer
visual artifacts than DCT because the wavelet
transform does not decompose the image
into blocks for processing.
1
In addition, an images histogram in the spa-
tial domain is approximately invariant to geo-
metric attacks. We can extend this invariance
property to the low-frequency subband of the
DWT domain in order to design a geometric-
invariant watermarking method.
Most compressed video data are stored as
block DCT coefficients and motion vectors.
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 70
Multimedia in Forensics, Security,
and Intelligence
A proposed real-time
video watermarking
scheme is
transparent and
robust to geometric
distortions, including
rotation with
cropping, scaling,
aspect ratio change,
frame dropping, and
swapping.
1070-986X/12/$31.00
c
2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society 70
Therefore, obtaining one-level DWT of com-
pressed video frames is time consuming using
existing methods, which first decompress the
block DCTs of frames into pixel data and
then perform DWT on the data. In fact, both
DCT and DWT are linear and invertible trans-
forms, and a linear relationship exists between
block DCT coefficients and its DWT coeffi-
cients.
2
Therefore, we can directly obtain the
images one-level DWT coefficients from the
block DCT coefficients without involving in-
verse DCT (IDCT) to maintain low computa-
tional cost.
Fast Intertransformation between Block DCTs
and One-Level DWT
Lets consider an image (or a frame) X with a
size of (L S) (M S). We can divided this
image into L M blocks, which are denoted
as Sb
ij
with a size of S S. A 2D DCT transform
of Sb
ij
can be expressed as
C
ij
= B
1
Sb
ij
B
T
1
(1)
Sb
ij
= B
1
1
C
ij
(B
T
1
)
1
(2)
where B
1
is an orthogonal matrix.
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 71
Related Work in Digital Watermarking
In recent research in real-time watermarking, the label
bits are embedded in a pattern of energy difference
1-3
or
number differences
4
between macroblocks by selectively
removing high-frequency components. These algorithms
are less complex but not robust enough. Tanfeng Sun pro-
posed differential energy watermarking (DEW) based on
the Watson visual model, which is applied to the video
streaming.
5
The algorithm embeds a watermark into the
sub-low-frequency of this AC coefficient in the video
streaming. Azadeh Mansouri and his colleagues proposed
a blind and readable H.264 compressed-domain water-
marking scheme in which they embedded and extracted
the watermark using the syntactic elements of the com-
pressed bit stream.
6
Researchers have also proposed methods for resisting ge-
ometric distortions in compressed video. Chun-Shien Lu
and Hong-Yuan Mark Liao proposed a video watermarking
algorithm for MPEG-4 object protection that uses a video
objects eigenvectors to synchronize rotation and flipping.
7
Another work proposed an MPEG-2 video watermarking al-
gorithm in which geometric distortions are handled with the
full discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain.
8
This method
has a low complexity and high robustness against horizontal
cropping, but it cannot resist rotation, vertical, or random
cropping.
None of these methods are suitable or practical for real-
time video watermarking to resist geometric distortions.
Most compressed video data are stored as block DCT coeffi-
cients and motion vectors. Any geometric processing leads
to a repartition of the blocks, which in turn changes the
coefficients and motion vectors. This implies that conven-
tional block-based watermarking techniques, such as the
DEW algorithm
1
and the singular value decomposition
(SVD) based video watermarking algorithm
9
are vulnerable
to any geometric distortion.
References
1. G.C. Langelaar and R.L. Lagendijk, Optimal Differential
Energy Watermarking of DCT Encoded Images and Video,
IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 10, no. 1, 2001,
pp. 148-158.
2. I. Setyawan and R.L. Lagendijk, Low Bit-Rate Video
Watermarking Using Temporally Extended Differential
Energy Watermarking (DEW) Algorithm, Security and
Watermarking of Multimedia Contents III, SPIE Press, 2001,
pp. 73-84.
3. H.F. Ling, Z.D. Lu, and F. H. Zou, Improved Differential
Energy Watermarking (IDEW) Algorithm for DCT Encoded
Image and Video, Proc. 7th Intl Conf. Signal Processing
(ICSP), IEEE Press, 2004, pp. 2328-2331.
4. H.F. Ling, Z.D. Lu, and F. Zou, New Real-Time Watermark-
ing Algorithm for Compressed Video in VLC Domain,
Proc. IEEE Intl Conf. Image Processing, IEEE Press, 2004,
pp. 2171-2174.
5. T. Sun, A Novel Self-adaptation Differential Energy Video
Watermarking Scheme in Copyright Protection, J. Multi-
media, 2009, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 153-160.
6. A. Mansouri et al., A Low Complexity Video Watermarking
in H.264 Compressed Domain, IEEE Trans. Information
Forensics and Security, vol. 5, no. 4, 2010, pp. 649-657.
7. C.-S. Lu and H.-Y.M. Liao, Video Object-based Watermark-
ing: A Rotation and Flipping Resilient Scheme, Proc. IEEE
Intl Conf. Image Processing, vol. 2, IEEE Press, 2001,
pp. 483-486.
8. Y. Wang and A. Pearmain, Blind MPEG-2 Video Watermark-
ing Robust Against Geometric Attacks: A Set of Approaches
in DCT Domain, IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 15,
no. 6, 2006, pp. 1536-1543.
9. D. Wu et al., A Fast SVD Based Video Watermarking Algo-
rithm Compatible with MPEG2 Standard, Soft Computing,
vol. 13, no. 4, 2009, pp. 375-382.
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Equation 2 only gives us a block of the image
X, so the whole image can be expressed as
X =
B
1
0 0
0 B
1
0
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
0
0 0 0 B
1
2
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
5
1
LSLS

C
11
C
12
C
1M
C
21
C
22
C
2M
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
C
L1
C
L2
C
LM
2
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
5

B
T
1
0 0
0 B
T
1
0
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
0
0 0 0 B
T
1
2
6
6
6
6
6
4
3
7
7
7
7
7
5
1
MSMS
(3)
The three matrices on the right of Equation 3
are denoted as B
4
, C
part
and B
5
, respectively.
We can also compute the one-level DWT
coefficients of image X. Here, the DWT will be
taken using the Haar wavelet, which is the sim-
plest possible wavelet. It is both separable and
symmetric and can be expressed in matrix form
R = H X Q
T
(4)
where H and Q are transformation matrices.
For the Haar wavelet transform, H contains
the Haar basis functions, h
k
(z). They are
defined over the continuous, closed interval
z [0, 1] for k = 0, 1, 2, . . ., LS 1, where
LS = 2
e
. To generate H, we define the integer
k such that k = 2p q 1, where 0 _ p _
e 1, 0 _ q _ e 1, q = 0 or 1 for p = 0,
and 1 _ q _ 2
p
for p ,= 0. Then the Haar basis
functions are
h
0
(z) = h
00
(z) =
1

LS
_ ; z [0; 1[ (5)
and
h
k
(z) = h
pq
(z)
=
1

LS
_
2
p=2
; (q 1)

2
p
_ z < (q 0:5)

2
p
2
p=2
; (q 0:5)

2
p
_ z < q

2
p
0; otherwize; z [0; 1[
8
<
:
(6)
The ith rowof an LS LS Haar transformation
matrix contains the elements of h
i
(z) for z =
0/LS, 1/LS, 2/LS, . . . , (LS 1)/LS. The MS MS
transformation matrix Q can also be designed
this way. For the special case of L = M, we
have H = Q. Both of H and Q are orthogonal
matrices.
The inverse Haar wavelet transform in Equa-
tion 4 can be expressed as
X = H
T
R Q (7)
Substituting X into Equation 7 with Equa-
tion 3, we obtain DWT coefficient matrix R
using this expression:
R = A
1
C
part
A
2
(8)
where A
1
= H B
4
, A
2
= B
5
Q
T
. Both are
orthogonal matrices. Most of the elements in
the two matrixes are zeros and are sparse ma-
trices. This contributes to significant savings
in computational cost. In addition, given L,
M, and S, these matrices are only dependent
on the images size instead of its content. Be-
cause all the frames in a video sequence have
the same size, A
1
and A
2
are constants and
can be computed in advance. This signifi-
cantly accelerates the processing speed and
lowers the computational complexity.
We can directly obtain the set of block DCT
coefficients from the DWT coefficient matrix
using the inverse transformation in Equation 8:
C
part
= A
1
T
R A
2
T
(9)
Invariance of the Histogram Shape
in the DWT Domain
Histograms in the spatial domain measure the
numerous global features of all the pixels in an
image, and an images histogram distribution
is approximately invariant to geometric
attacks, such as rotation, scaling, shearing,
and light cropping. The low-frequency sub-
band of the one-level DWT is a down-sampled
image of the origin image.
We can analyze the Haar wavelet transform
and the transformation matrices H and Q and
deduce from Equation 6 that every element in
the down-sampled image is the average value
of a pixel block. For example, the first element
at (1, 1) in the down-sampled image is the aver-
age value of four pixels at the positions (1, 1),
(1, 2), (2, 1), and (2, 2) in the origin image.
When the origin image is changed, the low-
frequency DWT subband undergoes a corre-
sponding change. The coefficients in the low-
frequency subband might change a little be-
cause the adjacent pixels in the image are sim-
ilar due to the spatial relationship. Therefore,
we can deduce that the histogram shape in
the DWT domain is invariant to geometric dis-
tortions, just as the histogram shape was in the
spatial domain.
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To evaluate the invariance to geometric dis-
tortions of the histogram shape in the DWT do-
main, we compute the relative relations of each
two successive bins in the number of low-
frequency DWT coefficients, denoted by A(k).
A(k) =
G(k 1)
G(k)
; 1 _ k _ L
g
1 (10)
where G is the histogram vector and L
g
is the
number of bins. We took one frame (of size
720 480) fromthe carriage test video as an ex-
ample. We implemented four typical geometric
distortions including rotation, scaling, aspect
ratio change, and cropping. Figure 1 shows
that the relative relations in the number of
DWT coefficients among groups of two neigh-
boring bins are relatively stable under these ge-
ometric distortions. This means the histogram
shape is invariant to various geometric distor-
tions, which implies that if we embed the
watermark based on the relative relations we
can expect the watermark to resist those geo-
metric distortions.
Proposed Scheme
In this section, we will introduce our video
watermarking algorithm. We first describe
the watermark embedding and then present
the watermark detection.
Watermark Embedding
Because the watermark-embedding process is
performed in the one-level DWT domain, the
compressed video should be partially decoded
to obtain the 2D block DCT coefficients of the
frames luminance. For P- and B-frames, the
interblock should be updated by adding its ref-
erence block in I- or P-frames. For intrablocks
in P-frames, no updating is necessary.
Figure 2 shows the watermark-embedding
process. In one video sequence, continuous
frames are chosen to form a basic carrier unit
for watermark embedding, which we call the
watermark minimal sequence (WMS). For each
frame in one WMS, we compute the DWT coef-
ficients directly from the block DCTs. Then, we
embed the watermark into the histogram bins
calculated from the low-frequency subband of
the DWT domain.
The binary watermark is denoted as W= {w
i
| i
= 1, 2, . . ., L
w
}. Each bit of W is either 1 or 0, and
L
w
is the watermark length. The watermark W
is divided into F equal-sized segments, each of
which is embedded into the histogram shape
of one frame in each WMS, in order. The
steps of the embedding process are as follows.
Step 1. For each WMS, we calculate the
one-level DWT coefficient matrix of every
frame from the block DCTs using Equation 8.
Step 2. We compute the histogram shape
in the DWT domain and acquire the number of
coefficients in each bin.
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 73
Figure 1. The effect of the geometric distortions on the histogram shape. We
implemented four typical geometric distortions: (a) rotation, (b) scaling,
(c) aspect ratio change (d), and cropping. The relative relations in the number
of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) coefficients among groups of two
neighboring bins are relatively stable under these geometric distortions.
5 10 15 20 25 30
0
1
2
3
4
n BINs
A
(
k
)
20 rotation
Original
5 10 15 20 25 30
0
1
2
3
4
n BINs
A
(
k
)
Scaling of 0.8
Original
5 10 15 20 25 30
0
1
2
3
4
n BINs
A
(
k
)
10% cropping
Original
5 10 15 20 25 30
0
1
2
3
4
n BINs
A
(
k
)
Aspect to 4:3
Original
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
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For low-frequency subband coefficients for
every frame, the average value is calculated as

V.
An embedding range U = 1 ( )

V; 1 ( )

V

is determined, where is a parameter set to
0.6. The histogram vector produced is denoted
by G
q
= {g
q
(j) | j = 1, 2, . . . , L
g
}, 1 _ q _ F. where
g
q
(j) is the number of coefficients in the jth bin
of the qth frame. In order to embed all the bits,
L
g
should be not less than 2L
w
/F.
Step 3. We embed each watermark bit
into two neighboring bins by reassigning the
number of coefficients in the two bins. Let E
1
and E
2
be two consecutive bins in the extracted
histogram vector. These bins include g
q
(j) and
g
q
(j 1) coefficients, respectively. We control
the relative relation of the two bins in order
to embed one bit of information:
g
q
(j)

g
q
(j 1) _ T; if w
i
= 1
g
q
(j 1)

g
q
(j) _ T; if w
i
= 0
(
(11)
where T is a threshold that controls the number
of modified coefficients. We select the thresh-
old by considering the watermark robustness
performance and the embedding distortion.
Afterward, we embed one bit in two consecu-
tive bins. First, we consider the case when w
i
is 1.
If g
q
(j)/g
q
(j 1) _ T, no operation is needed.
Otherwise, if g
q
(j)/g
q
(j 1) < T, some randomly
selected coefficients will be moved to E
1
from
E
2
, satisfying g
q
(j)
/
/g
q
(j 1)
/
_ T. n
1
denotes the
number of these selected coefficients. Then, if
w
i
is 0 and g
q
(j 1)/g
q
(j) < T, some randomly
selected coefficients will be moved to E
2
from
E
1
, satisfying g
q
(j 1)
//
/g
q
(j)
//
_ T. n
2
denotes
the number of these selected coefficients. This
is the rule for reassigning the coefficients:
c
1m
(i) = c
1
(i) M; 1 _ i _ n
1
c
2m
(j) = c
2
(j) M; 1 _ j _ n
2
(
(12)
where c
1
(i) and c
2
(j) are the ith and jth selected
coefficients in E
2
and E
1
, respectively. M is the
bin width. The modified c
1m
(i) and c
2m
(j) be-
long to E
1
and E
2
, respectively. n
1
and n
2
can
be calculated as follows:
n
1
= (T g
q
(j) g
q
(j 1))

(1 T)
n
2
= (T g
q
(j 1) g
q
(j))

(1 T)
(
(13)
We repeat this procedure until watermark bits
are embedded in the corresponding frame in
one WMS.
Step 4. The modified differences of all
DWT coefficients are inversely transformed
to the modified differences of block DCT
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 74
Block
DCTs to
DWT
C
o
e
f
f
i
c
i
e
n
t
s
m
o
d
i
f
i
c
a
t
i
o
n
Watermark
W
Low-frequency
subband modified
coefficients of
DWT

+
All the coefficients are
zeros except the modified
coefficients
DWT
to block
DCTs
+
+
Block DCT
data
(after DQT)
F Continuous video frames are
selected
Difference
of the low-
frequency
subband
of DWT
Watermarked
frames
(block DCT data)
Difference
of block
DCT data
Low-frequency
subband
coefficients of
DWT
E
x
t
r
a
c
t
i
n
g
h
i
s
t
o
g
r
a
m
Figure 2. The
watermark-embedding
process. For each frame
in one watermark
minimal sequence
(WMS), we compute
the discrete wavelet
transform (DWT)
coefficients directly
from the block discrete
cosine transform(DCT)
coefficients.
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coefficients using Equation 9, followed by add-
ing them to the original block DCT coefficients
to generate the new watermarked frame. This
process can reduce computational cost and
lower complexity because most of the modified
differences of all DWT coefficients are zero.
Step 5. By repeating steps 2 through 4, the
L
w
-bits watermark can be embedded into one
WMS.
Watermark Detection
Unlike the watermark-embedding process, the
watermark detection does not need to re-en-
code the frames into compressed data. Com-
pressed video data can also be easily and
quickly decoded by employing some codec or
decoding chips. Therefore, we could perform
the watermark detection after decoding the
video data. Because watermark extraction is in-
dependent of the video coding formats, we can
extract the watermark signal correctly even if
users re-encode the video using other video
coding standards.
Figure 3 shows the watermark-detection pro-
cess. The detection process includes four steps.
Step 1. We choose contiguous frames as
one WMS with a sliding window. In each
WMS, we calculate the one-level DWT coeffi-
cient matrix R
w
of every frame by the Haar
wavelet transform in the spatial domain.
Step 2. As in the watermark-embedding
process, we compute the mean

V
w
of the low-
frequency subband coefficients of the DWT do-
main of each frame in one WMS and generate
the histogram vector G
w
q
1 _ q _ F ( ) with
equal-sized bins.
Step 3. Suppose that the number of coeffi-
cients in two consecutive bins are g
q
(j)
w
and
g
q
(j 1)
w
. We can extract the hidden bit by
comparing their values:
w
e
i
=
1; if g
q
(j)
w

g
q
(j 1)
w
_ 1
0; otherwise
(
(14)
We can extract L
w
/F watermark bits from the
corresponding frame in the WMS by repeating
this process.
Step 4. By repeating steps 2 through 3,
we can extract the L
w
-bits watermark
from all frames in the WMS. The extracted
watermark sequence is denoted as
W
e
= w
e
i
[i = 1; 2; . . . ; L
w

. We can then decide
the robustness by comparing it with the origi-
nal watermark sequence W using the bit error
rate (BER) as follows:
=
1
L
w
X
L
w
k=1
(w
e
k
w
k
) (15)
where is the XOR operation. The smaller ,
the fewer the number of wrong bits in the
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 75
Select F Continuous video
frames with a sliding window
Watermark
extraction
Y component
(spatial domain)
Watermark
is present?
N
End
Computing
DWT
domain
of frames
Low-frequency
subband
coefficients of DWT
Histogram
extraction
Y
Figure 3. The
watermark-detection
process. The four-step
detection process does
not involve re-encoding
the frames into
compressed data.
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extracted watermark is. If is smaller than the
BER threshold
BER
, we can successfully extract
the watermark in the WMS. Otherwise, there is
no watermark hidden in the WMS. Then, we
slide the window onto the next frame to
form a new WMS.
Computational Complexity Analysis
A watermarking schemes real-time performance
is inversely proportional to its computational
complexity. Most video watermarking applica-
tions require real-time performance, so the
watermarking algorithms complexity should
be as low as possible.
In our proposed algorithm, the whole water-
mark-embedding process includes partial
decoding, which consists of variable length
decoding and dequantization, the intertrans-
formation between the DWT coefficients and
block DCTs, coefficient modification, and par-
tial encoding. Here we focus on the computa-
tional cost of the intertransformation because
it accounts for much of the time required for
the watermark embedding.
We compared our method based on inter-
transformation with the traditional method
using the IDCT and DWT. For the sake of con-
venience, suppose the size of one frame is N N.
Both A
1
and A
2
are sparse matrices, which con-
tributes to significant savings in computational
cost. Our fast method costs O(N
2
) time to com-
pute the DWT coefficients and transform the
watermarked DWT coefficients back to the
block DCTs, while the traditional method
costs O(N
2

N
_
) time. This means our method
is

N
_
times faster than the traditional method,
which helps our proposed watermarking
scheme achieve a substantial savings in compu-
tational cost.
Experiments and Discussion
As Figure 4 shows, to test our proposed
scheme, we used four video sequences, all of
which are widely used for video watermarking
tests. The first two sequences are MPEG-2
encoded at 6 megabits per seconds (Mbps),
and the rest are MPEG-1 encoded at 2.2 and
1.5 Mbps, respectively. In the experiments,
the length of the embedded watermark is 60.
The threshold T is set to 3. The BER threshold

BER
is set to 0.23.
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 76
(b) (a)
(c) (d)
Figure 4. Four test
video sequences. The
(a) mobile and
(b) carriage sequences
are MPEG-2 encoded at
6 megabits per seconds
(Mbps), and the
(c) Paris and (d) farmer
sequences are MPEG-1
encoded at 2.2 and
1.5 Mbps, respectively.
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We can objectively assess the visual quality
by measuring the peak signal-to-noise ratio
(PSNR) of watermarked frames compared with
the original frames. The average PSNR values
of four watermarked video sequences are 39,
40, 39, and 48 decibels (dB), separately. All
the values are higher than 37 dB. Perceptually,
the original video and the watermarked video
are visually indistinguishable. This implies
that the watermarking scheme can achieve
visual transparence.
Estimation of robustness
We implemented a video watermarking attack
tool named VBMark based on the VirtualDub
program to modify the watermarked videos
with various types of attacks. We considered
the watermarking scheme to be robust if the
computed BER is less than the threshold
BER
(0.23).
Commonly, the cropping rotations are
slight for video signals and the rotation angles
are no more than 5 degrees. When the rotated
angles gradually increase to 35 degrees, the
BER values remain less than the threshold
BER
.
In our experiment, we also applied several
scale factors0.7, 0.9, 1.2, and 1.5to the
test video signals.
Frame aspect ratio changes convert the size
of the target video frame. Digital frames come
in several aspect ratios. The most common are
4:3, 11:9, and 16:9. We applied aspect ratios
to the test video signals that differed from
their original ratio.
Table 1 shows the experimental results of
each robustness measure: cropping rotations,
scaling, frame aspect ratio changes, and Gaus-
sian low-pass filtering. In each case, the BER
values are less than the threshold
BER
, indicat-
ing that our algorithmis robust to these attacks.
Because the watermark is embedded in one
WMS in each GOP repeatedly, it can be
detected successfully even if only one WMS is
left. That means a frame-dropping attack is
not a threat to our proposed method. In our
experiment, we dropped two frames and bor-
rowed two frames from the next GOP. As
Table 1 shows, the BER is equal to zero, which
means we can still extract the watermark
correctly.
Frame swapping involves switching the order
of frames randomly within one GOP. However,
too many frame swaps will degrade video qual-
ity. Therefore, we swapped frames three times
during our experiments. In fact, this caused
no significant changes within one GOP. Three
swaps do not cause much difference in tempo-
ral frequency domain. Thus, as Table 1 shows,
our scheme is robust against frame swapping.
In our last robustness test, we measured
robustness against file-format conversion,
which is significant because a video datas file
format is easily changed by some software
tools. Our test watermarked video sequences
were originally in MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 formats.
We converted them into the MPEG-4, Divx,
Xvid, and H.264 formats and extracted the
watermark. The BER is nearly reaches zero
(see Table 1), which suggests that our algo-
rithm is robust against common file-format
conversions.
Robustness Performance Comparison
We compared our scheme to the algorithm
proposed by Yulin Wang and Alan Pearmain
(Wangs algorithm), which is a typical video
watermarking algorithms resistant to geomet-
ric attacks.
3
Our method proved robust to the
[3B2-9] mmu2012010070.3d 12/1/012 14:35 Page 77
Table 1. Experimental results for four watermarked sequences.
Average bit error rate (%)
Attack Mobile Carriage Paris Farmer
Rotation with cropping (1

) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (2

) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (5

) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (10

) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (15

) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (20

) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (25

) 1.7 0.0 0.0 0.0

Rotation with cropping (30

) 3.3 0.0 1.7 1.7

Rotation with cropping (35

) 5.0 0.0 3.3 3.3

Scaling to 0.7 1.7 0.0 3.3 3.3
Scaling to 0.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7
Scaling to 1.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Scaling to 1.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Aspect to 4:3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Aspect to 11:9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Aspect to 16:9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Guassian low-pass filtering 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.3
Frame dropping 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Frame swapping 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
MPEG-4 compression (3,000 Kbps) 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7
Xvid compression (2,500 Kbps) 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7
Dvid compression (2,000 Kbps) 1.7 1.7 1.7 3.3
H.264 compression (1,000 Kbps) 3.3 4.6 3.3 6.7
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attacks listed in Tables 1 and 2, and it outper-
forms Wangs algorithm. For rotation (RST)
attacks, the average BER of our method was
much lower than
BER
, even when the rotation
angle is up to 35 degrees. The average error
rate for the Wangs algorithm was 2.13 percent
for a 1 degree rotation, but it failed when the
rotation angle was larger than 2 degrees.
Both algorithms are robust to rescaling.
However, our method can resist an aspect
ratio attack, with an average BER of approxi-
mately 0 percent, but the Wangs method can-
not resist this attack.
For the performance against video compres-
sion, format conversion, and other specialized
attacks, both method can resist format conver-
sion and frame dropping. However, the Wangs
algorithm is sensitive to frame swapping while
our method is not.
Real-Time Performance
In our final measure, we used the normal
decoding as a baseline to check whether the
watermark embedding and detection can
achieve real-time performance rates. We con-
sidered the watermarking process acceptable
if the consumed time is less than that of the
normal decoding because then can be finished
when the decoding ends.
We compared our process with the DEW
4
and Wangs algorithms.
3
DEW has demon-
strated excellent performance in real time, but
it is vulnerable to geometric distortions. The
DEW algorithm also has a low complexity be-
cause it embeds the watermark by shifting the
end of block (EOB) marker, which avoids
re-encoding.
In the real-time experiments, we used three
schemes to embed the same watermark into
the carriage video sequence and then
attempted to detect the watermark. Figure 5
shows the consumed time of each method
and the normal decoding time of the test
video. It shows that all methods meet the
real-time requirements. The DEW algorithm
only consumes 353 and 324 ms, respectively,
during the watermark embedding and detec-
tion, while the Wangs algorithm took 1,362
and 1,521 ms, respectively. Although the con-
sumed time of our proposed algorithm during
the watermark embedding and detection was
about 1,032 and 857 ms, respectively, our
schemes consumed time is still less than half
of that of the normal decoding, which means
the watermark embedding and detection pro-
cesses can meet the real-time requirement.
The DEW algorithm outperformed our method
because it doesnt take into consideration resis-
tance to the geometric distortions.
Security Analysis
In our proposed scheme, we achieve robustness
using the invariance of the histogram shape of
the low-frequency subband coefficients of the
one-level DWT domain. The watermark embed-
ding is designed by modulating the relative
relations of each two successive bins in the
number of low-frequency DWT coefficients.
Assuming the bin width is set to an appropriate
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Figure 5. Time consumed during the watermark embedding and detection
process for a carriage sequence. The experimentwas done using a PC with
a 2.8-Gbyte CPU and 512M DDR2 memory.
Table 2. Robustness performance comparison with Wangs method.
3
Average bit error rate (%)
Attack Our method Wangs method*
Rotation with cropping (1

) 0.0 2.13
Rotation with cropping (2

) 0.0
Rotation with cropping (5

) 0.0
Rotation with cropping (10

) 0.0
Rotation with cropping (15

) 0.0
Scale to 0.7 1.7 0.0
Scale to 0.9 0.0 0.0
Aspect to 11:9 0
Aspect to 4:3 0.0
Format conversion 0.0 0.0
Frame dropping 0.0 0.0
Frame swapping 0.0
* The indicates that the watermark detection failed.
0
Watermark embedding Watermark detection Normal decoding
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
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2,500
3,000
3,500
4,000
Our method
Wang's method
Dew
Full decoding
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Our real-time video
watermarking scheme
is suitable for other
DCT-based compressed
videos because the DWT
domain could be directly
acquired from block
DCTs of any size.
value and it is unknown, an adversary attempt-
ing to remove the watermark by modifying
coefficients randomly will fail. Because random
modifications are unlikely to significantly
change the number of low-frequency DWT
coefficients in each bin, the relative relations
of each two successive bins will be unchanged.
This implies that the watermark will be still
extracted correctly in the watermark-detection
process. Consequently, the security of our
scheme has been guaranteed.
Conclusion
In this work, we presented a real-time video
watermarking scheme with high robustness in
the compressed domain. Although we only
tested our proposed scheme on video in the
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 format, it is suitable for
other DCT-based compressed videos such as
MPEG-4 and H.264 because the DWT domain
could be directly acquired from block DCTs
of any size. This algorithm can be used for
data hiding in many applications such as
authentication and copyright protection. In
the future, we will consider other attacks
such as camera capturing. We will also adapt
the algorithm for video data in MPEG-4 and
H.264 format. MM
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Science
Foundation of China under grants 60873226
and 60803112, the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities, and the
Wuhan Youth Science and Technology Chen-
guang Program.
References
1. X.Y. Wang and H. Zhao, A Novel Synchroniza-
tion Invariant Audio Watermarking Scheme Based
on DWT and DCT, IEEE Trans. Signal Processing,
vol. 54, no. 12, 2006, pp. 4835-4840.
2. B.J. Davis and S.H. Nawab, The Relationship of
Transform Coefficients for Differing Transforms
and/or Differing Subblock Sizes, IEEE Trans.
Signal Processing, vol. 52, no. 5, 2004,
pp. 1458-1461.
3. Y. Wang and A. Pearmain, Blind MPEG-2 Video
Watermarking Robust Against Geometric Attacks:
A Set of Approaches in DCT Domain, IEEE
Trans. Image Processing, vol. 15, no. 6, 2006,
pp. 1536-1543.
4. G.C. Langelaar and R.L. Lagendijk, Optimal Dif-
ferential Energy Watermarking of DCT Encoded
Images and Video, IEEE Trans. Image Processing,
vol. 10, no. 1, 2001, pp. 148-158.
Liyun Wang is a PhD student in computer science at
the Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
China. Her research interests include digital finger-
printing and digital rights management. Wang has
a BE in computer science from Huazhong University
of Science and Technology. Contact her at
yuner1130@hotmail.com.
Hefei Ling is an associate professor in the College of
Computer Science at the Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, China. His research interests
include copy and near-duplicate detection, digital
watermarking and fingerprinting, and content secu-
rity and protection. Ling has a PhD in computer
science from the Huazhong University of Science
and Technology. He is a member of IEEE. Contact
him at lhefei@hust.edu.cn (corresponding author).
Fuhao Zou is an associate professor in the College of
Computer Science at the Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, China. His research interests
include copy and near-duplicate detection. Zou has a
PhD in computer science from the Huazhong Univer-
sity of Science and Technology. Contact him at
fuhao_zou@hust.edu.cn.
Zhengding Lu is a professor at the Huazhong Uni-
versity of Science and Technology, China. His
research interests include distributed computing,
distributed database systems, heterogeneous sys-
tem integration, and information security. Lu has
a PhD in computer science from the Huazhong
University of Science and Technology. Contact
him at zdlu@hust.edu.cn.
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