Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Data Hiding in H.264/AVC Video Files Using the Coded Block Pattern

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Digital Forensics and Watermarking (IWDW 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 10082))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This paper presents a novel data hiding method for H.264 which employs the coded block pattern (CBP) as the data carrier. The CBP is defined in the H.264/AVC standard, and indicates which luma and chroma blocks in a macroblock contain non-zero transform coefficients. To the best of our knowledge, little research has been conducted on exploiting the CBP for information hiding. In the proposed method, the four least significant bits of each CBP are mapped to a single bit to form the embedding channel. In addition, an embedding distortion function is specifically designed to evaluate the impacts of CBP manipulation on visual quality and compression efficiency. Combined with the suitably defined distortion function, the syndrome-trellis codes are employed to minimize the overall embedding impact. The experimental results show that only a slight reduction in visual quality would be caused, even when large payload is embedded. In addition, the compression efficiency could be maintained with insignificant fluctuation in bitrates.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The Macroblock Layer contains all the syntax elements necessary to decode a single macroblock.

  2. 2.

    % denotes the modulo operator, i.e., a % b denotes the remainder of a divided by b.

  3. 3.

    The Iverson bracket [I] is defined to be 1 if the logical expression I is true and 0 otherwise.

References

  1. Mielikainen, J.: LSB matching revisited. IEEE Signal Process. Lett. 13(5), 285–287 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hartung, F., Girod, B.: Watermarking of uncompressed and compressed video. Signal Process. 66(3), 283–301 (1998)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Cox, I.J., Kilian, J., Leighton, F.T., Shamoon, T.: Secure spread spectrum watermarking for multimedia. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 6(12), 1673–1687 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Jordan, F., Kutter, M., Ebrahimi, T.: Proposal of a watermarking technique for hiding/retrieving data in compressed and decompressed video. Tech. rep. M2281, ISO/IEC Document, JTC1/SC29/WG11, Stockholm, Sweden, July 1997

    Google Scholar 

  5. Xu, C., Ping, X., Zhang, T.: Steganography in compressed video stream. In: Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control, pp. 269–272. Beijing, China, September 2006

    Google Scholar 

  6. Aly, H.A.: Data hiding in motion vectors of compressed video based on their associated prediction error. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 6(1), 14–18 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Cao, Y., Zhang, H., Zhao, X., Yu, H.: Video steganography based on optimized motion estimation perturbation. In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, pp. 25–31. Portland (June 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Zhang, H., Cao, Y., Zhao, X.: Motion vector-based video steganography with preserved local optimality. Multimed. Tools Appl. 75, 13503–13519 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hu, Y., Zhang, C.: Yuting: information hiding based on intra prediction modes for H.264/AVC. In: Proceedings of 2007 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, pp. 1231–1234. Beijing, China, July 2007

    Google Scholar 

  10. Yang, G., Li, J., He, Y.: Zhiwei: an information hiding algorithm based on intra-prediction modes and matrix coding for H.264/AVC video stream. AEU Int. J. Electron. Commun. 65(4), 331–337 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Xu, D., Wang, R., Wang, J.: Prediction mode modulated data-hiding algorithm for H.264/AVC. J. Real Time Image Process. 7(4), 205–214 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Kapotas, S.K., Skodras, A.N.: A new data hiding scheme for scene change detection in H. 264 encoded video sequences. In: Proceedings of 2008 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Expo, pp. 277–280. Hannover, Germany (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Zhang, H., Cao, Y., Zhao, X., Zhang, W., Yu, N.: Video steganography with perturbed macroblock partition. In: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, pp. 115–122. Salzburg, Austria, June 2014

    Google Scholar 

  14. Ma, X., Li, Z., Tu, H., Zhang, B.: A data hiding algorithm for H.264/AVC video streams without intra-frame distortion drift. IEEE Trans. Circ. Syst. Video Technol. 20(10), 1320–1330 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Lin, T., Chung, K., Chang, P., Huang, Y., Liao, H.M., Fang, C.: An improved DCT-based perturbation scheme for high capacity data hiding in H.264/AVC intra frames. J. Syst. Softw. 86(3), 604–614 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Chang, P., Chung, K., Chen, J., Lin, C., Lin, T.: A DCT/DST-based error propagation-free data hiding algorithm for hevc intra-coded frames. J. Vis. Commun. Image Representation 25(2), 239–253 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Wong, K., Tanaka, K., Takagi, K., Nakajima, Y.: Complete video quality-preserving data hiding. IEEE Trans. Circ. Syst. Video Technol. 19(10), 1499–1512 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Shanableh, T.: Data hiding in MPEG video files using multivariate regression and flexible macroblock ordering. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 7(2), 455–464 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Li, J., Liu, H., Huang, J., Zhang, Y.: A robust watermarking scheme for H.264. Digital Watermarking, January 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04438-0_1

  20. Kim, S.M., Kim, S.B., Hong, Y., Won, C.S.: Data hiding on H.264/AVC compressed video. In: Kamel, M., Campilho, A. (eds.) ICIAR 2007. LNCS, vol. 4633, pp. 698–707. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-74260-9_62

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Liao, K., Lian, S., Guo, Z., Wang, J.: Efficient information hiding in H.264/AVC video coding. Telecommun. Syst. 49(2), 261–269 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Wiegand, T., Sullivan, G.J., Bjontegaard, G., Luthra, A.: Overview of the H.264/AVC video coding standard. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 13(7), 560–576 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Filler, T., Judas, J., Fridrich, J.: Minimizing additive distortion in steganography using syndrome-trellis codes. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur. 6(3), 920–935 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. VideoLAN-x264, The Best H.264/AVC Encoder. http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the NSFC under 61303259 and U1536105, Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS under XDA06030600, National Key Technology R&D Program under 2014BAH41B01, and Key Project of Institute of Information Engineering, CAS, under Y5Z0131201.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Information Security, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 89A, Minzhuang Road, Beijing, 100093, China

    Hong Zhang, Yun Cao, Xianfeng Zhao, Haibo Yu & Changjun Liu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A, Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049, China

    Hong Zhang, Yun Cao, Xianfeng Zhao, Haibo Yu & Changjun Liu

Authors
  1. Hong Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yun Cao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Xianfeng Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Haibo Yu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Changjun Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hong Zhang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, USA

    Yun Qing Shi

  2. Korea University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Hyoung Joong Kim

  3. University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Fernando Perez-Gonzalez

  4. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Feng Liu

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Zhang, H., Cao, Y., Zhao, X., Yu, H., Liu, C. (2017). Data Hiding in H.264/AVC Video Files Using the Coded Block Pattern. In: Shi, Y., Kim, H., Perez-Gonzalez, F., Liu, F. (eds) Digital Forensics and Watermarking. IWDW 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10082. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53465-7_44

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53465-7_44

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53464-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53465-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation