Efficient video watermarking based on singular value decomposition in the discrete wavelet transform domain

This paper presents an efficient, robust, and imperceptible video watermarking technique based on singular value decomposition (SVD) performed in the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) domain. In the proposed DWT-based SVD video watermarking method, the video frames are transformed with the DWT using two resolution levels. The high frequency band HH and the middle frequency bands LH and HL are SVD transformed and the watermark is hidden in them. The proposed DWT-based SVD video watermarking method is characterized by two improvements: (1) a cascade of two powerful mathematical transforms; the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)-based SVD using additive method, and (2) an error correction code is applied and embeds the watermark with spatial and temporal redundancy. The aim of these improvements is to increase robustness against attacks based on video characteristics and the robustness against image processing attacks, realize high security level, protect the watermark against bit errors and obtain good perceptual quality. The proposed DWT-based SVD video watermarking method has been tested in the presence of video and image processing attacks and experimental results proved that the proposed DWT-based SVD video watermarking method survives attacks based on video characteristics and image processing techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.