Antoine Robert

Adjusting bit-stream video watermarking systems to cope with HTTP adaptive streaming transmission

HTTP adaptive streaming has become the dominant solution for broadband streaming delivery. Essentially, the server delivers small chunks of content in response to queries from a player, that can alternate between different qualities of content depending on its rendering capabilities and the network condition. In this paper, we highlight that the frequent switches of this popular delivery mechanism are deemed to interfere with the payload modulation of bit-stream video watermarking systems. We then propose a generic strategy to cope with such transmission and showcase its efficiency in practice with a watermarking system that operates directly in the H.264/AVC CABAC bit-stream. Eventually, we evaluate the robustness of the proposed solution against standard attacks.

Impact of content mastering on the throughput of a bit stream video watermarking system

Video watermarking systems operating directly in the compressed bit stream are receiving increasing interest due to their ease of integration into existing content delivery workflows. Such algorithms, however, usually involve a strong dependency to the underlying video codec. In other words, the throughput of the system, e.g. the embedding rate, is heavily tied to the input bit stream. In this paper, we consider a watermarking system for H.264/AVC CABAC and study its throughput depending on the content mastering process. More precisely, we explore the influence of the compression ratio, the resolution, and some encoding parameters.

Multimedia security technologies for movie protection

In this industrial exhibit, Technicolor will showcase various technologies developed to protect digital audio-visual material all along the media value chain, from production to distribution, including forensics services in case pirated content is detected. The exhibit will be organized around Technicolors proprietary technologies in video fingerprinting and audio/video watermarking.

Impact of screencasting on video temporal synchronization

Spatio-temporal desynchronization remains a major challenge for watermarking system as it could impair the detection of the hidden payload. Over the years, several (non-blind) registration techniques have been proposed to realign the analyzed content prior to watermark detection and thereby achieve robustness against severe attacks such as display-and-camcord. Such techniques rely on assumptions that may be invalidated by new attacks that had not been accounted for. In the case of video, for instance, best-in-class resynchronization techniques may have difficulties to cope with screencasting. In this paper, we report findings after an experimental study that involved five popular screencasting tools. The impact of screencasting can indeed be characterized in terms of frame drops and repeats. Moreover, the on-the-fly encoding process occurring during screen recapture inherently introduces dependencies between the likelihood of drop/repeat and the frame encoding type.

Lightweight forensic video watermarking to enable premium content consumption on mobile devices

Content owners are reluctant to deliver premium content to open devices due to the risk of piracy and the corresponding potential for loss of revenue. To lift this deadlock, there is increasing interest in incorporating watermarking-based tracing mechanisms onto mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. The scarcity of resources calls for innovative watermarking paradigms. In this demo, we will exemplify how two-step bitstream video watermarking could be exploited to address this challenge and why it needs to be adapted to cope with the characteristics of HTTP adaptive streaming.