Watermarking of H.264 Coded Video Based on the Shifted-Histogram Technique

Abstract

Reversible video watermarking through shifted histogram of the quantized coefficients of the H.264/AVC coded video is introduced. In CIF sequences, the embedded data of a capacity of more than 2500 bits in I frame is possible and can exceed 7000 bits if we also exploit about 10 P frames in the GOP for the embedding. While the degradation introduced by the watermarked can achieve around 13 dB, the subjective impacts are almost negligible. This data hiding is reversible and it increases the encoded bits by less than 1 % and less than the embedding capacity offering the opportunity to carry information at a lower bitrate rather than a second channel.