Hsiang-Cheh Huang

Genetic watermarking based on transform-domain techniques

Abstract An innovative watermarking scheme based on genetic algorithms (GA) in the transform domain is proposed. It is robust against watermarking attacks, which are commonly employed in the literature. In addition, the watermarked image quality is also considered. In this paper, we employ GA for optimizing both the fundamentally conflicting requirements. Watermarking with GA is easy for implementation. We also examine the effectiveness of our scheme by checking the fitness function in GA, which includes both factors related to robustness and invisibility. Simulation results also show both the robustness under attacks, and the improvement in watermarked image quality with GA.

Layered access control schemes on watermarked scalable media

Intellectual Property (IP) protection is a critical element in multimedia transmission and delivery systems. Conventional IP protection on multimedia data can be categorized into encryption and watermarking. In this paper, a structure to perform layered access control on scalable media by combining encryption and robust watermarking is proposed, implemented, and verified. By taking advantages of the nature of both encryption and watermarking, copyrights of multimedia contents can be well protected and at the same time, multiple-grade services can be provided. In the summated examples, we assume a scalable transmission scheme over the broadcasting environment and use it to test the effectiveness of proposed method. When the embedded watermark is extracted with high confidence, the key to decrypt the next layer can be perfectly recovered. Then, the media contents are reconstructed and the copyrights are assured. The application examples also demonstrate the practicality of the proposed system.

Vector quantization based on genetic simulated annealing

Abstract Genetic algorithm (GA) has been successfully applied to codebook design for vector quantization (VQ). However, most conventional GA-based codebook design methods need long runtime because candidate solutions must be fine tuned by LBG. In this paper, a partition-based GA is applied to codebook design, which is referred to as genetic vector quantization (GVQ). In addition, simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is also used in GVQ to get more promising results and the corresponding method is referred to as GSAVQ. Both GVQ and GSAVQ use the linear scaling technique during the calculation of objective functions and use special crossover and mutation operations in order to obtain better codebooks in much shorter CPU time. Experimental results show that both of them save more than 71–87% CPU time compared to LBG. For different codebook sizes, GVQ outperforms LBG by 1.1–2.1xa0dB in PSNR, and GSAVQ outperforms LBG by 1.2–2.2xa0dB in PSNR. In addition, GVQ and GSAVQ need a little longer CPU time than, the maximum decent (MD) algorithm, but they outperform MD by 0.2–0.5xa0dB in PSNR.

Progressive watermarking techniques with genetic algorithms

An innovative watermarking scheme based on progressive transmission with genetic algorithms (GA) is proposed. We implement the watermarking embedding and extraction system in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain, and apply the JPEG spectral selection mode for progressive transmission. By employing GA with a proper fitness function into the watermarking system, both the watermark imperceptibility and watermark robustness requirements are considered and optimized. In addition, the embedded watermark can be partly extracted in the receiver side even when the watermarked image is being transmitted. Simulation results show both the robustness and the effectiveness of progressive transmission under different attacking schemes and different bandwidth variations.

Combined encryption and watermarking approaches for scalable multimedia coding

Intellectual Property (IP) protection is a critical element in a multimedia transmission system. Conventional IP protection schemes can be categorized into two major branches: encryption and watermarking. In this paper, a structure to perform layered access protection by combining encryption and robust watermarking is proposed and implemented. By taking advantage of the nature of cryptographic schemes and digital watermarking, the copyright of multimedia contents can be well protected. We adopt the scalable transmission method over the broadcasting environment. The embedded watermark can be thus extracted with high confidence. Then, the next-layer secrets can be perfectly decrypted and reconstructed. Finally, the media contents are recovered.

VQ-Based gray watermark hiding scheme and genetic index assignment

A vector quantisation (VQ) based watermarking scheme for hiding the gray watermark is presented. It expands the watermark size, and employs VQ index assignment procedure with genetic algorithm, called genetic index assignment (GIA), for watermarking. The gray watermark is coded by VQ, and obtained indices are translated into a binary bitstream with a much smaller size. We partition the codebook into two sub-codebooks, and use either one of them based on the value of the bit for embedding. Next, GIA is employed to find better imperceptibility of watermarked image. Experimental results show that the proposed method possesses advantages over other related methods in literature.

Automated information mining on multimedia TV news archives

This paper addresses an integrated information mining techniques for multimedia TV-news archive. The utilizes techniques from the fields of acoustic, image, and video analysis, for information retrieval on news story title, newsman and scene identification. The goal is to construct a compact yet meaningful abstraction of broadcast news video, allowing users to browse through large amounts of data in a non-linear fashion with flexibility and efficiency. By using acoustic analysis, the system can classify video into news versus commercials, with 90% accuracy on a data set of 400 hours TV-news recorded off the air from July 2003 to August of 2004. By applying speaker identification and/or image detection techniques, each news stories can be segmented with an accuracy of 96%. On screen captions or subtitles are recognized by OCR techniques to produce the text title of each news stories. The extracted title words can be used to link or to navigate more related News contents on the WWW. In cooperation with facial and scene analysis and recognition techniques, OCR results can provide users with multimodality query for specific news stories. Some experimental results are presented and discussed for the system reliability and performance evaluation and comparison.

Enhanced motion estimation for interframe wavelet video coding

An enhanced motion estimation scheme is incorporated into the interframe wavelet coding architecture in this paper. Interframe wavelet coding has the advantage of SNR, temporal, and spatial scalability and is a potential candidate for the on-going MPEG-21 scalable video coding standard. Motion-compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) is one of its essential components. Therefore, motion estimation plays an important role in deciding the coding performance. In this paper, we modified the motion estimation syntax/scheme originally specified in the MPEG Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and use it in the interframe wavelet structure. Besides, the techniques of l-block, bidirectional motion estimation, /spl lambda/-value adjustment and motion information partitioning are employed. Simulation results show very promising performance particularly on subjective quality.

MPEG IPMP Concepts and Implementation

Intellectual Property (IP) protection is a critical element in a multi-media transmission system. Therefore, ISO/IEC MPEG started the IP protection standardization project on MPEG-4 a few years ago. A basic IPMP (Intellectual Property Protection and Management) structure and interface was first defined in its System part. In this paper, we will first outline the MPEG-4 basic IP protection mechanism and then describe our simulation of an MPEG-4 IPMP system. An IP protection application is constructed using the MPEG-4 system software - IM1 (Implementation Model one). This application includes a client-server program, in which a client can request the keys from a server in a secure way using a hierarchical key distribution structure.

The open source IPTV service development environment: IPTV service execution environment

HDTV will be the trend of future video entertainments, and IPTV is the most potential because true 2-way interaction bringing more new audiovisual entertainment options can only be delivered through IP networks.n This paper proposes a service execution environment, ISEE (IPTV Service Execution Environment), that is an open source framework. This environment supports various needs during developing and executing IPTV services, fully presents the interaction of IPTV with the Service Component Platform design concept, and has the features that can flexible use and provide new additional service quickly. in order to let service providers to quickly deliver interactive TV services that meet subscriber demands according to the market trends and thereby to build the brand loyalty and to enhance industry competitiveness. On the other hand, the design concept of modularization platform is applied to increase the flexibility and stability to expansion or update set-top-box (STB) or video server, and thereby to bring service providers more comprehensive options for platform maintenance.n ISEE service includes the programs executed on the service and client sides, that communicate with HTTP protocols. Server programs are run in the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and Servlet/JSP container environment, using Apache Struts as the web AP framework. Client programs are run in browsers supporting Javascript/CSS.n This paper also proposes the development tool---ISSE SDK based on the above targets. The ISEE SDK is the development tool for the IPTV services in ISEE. It is a freeware comply with the open source standards using licensing terms in Apache License, V2.[30] Service developers can freely modify the ISEE SDK source codes and freely use the SDK and the application services developing with it. The SDK is easy to use and allows users to quickly develop IPTV services to support various STBs.