Perceptual hash function for scalable video

Perceptual hash functions are important for video authentication based on digital signature verifying the originality and integrity of videos. They derive hashes from the perceptual contents of the videos and are robust against the common content-preserving operations on the videos. The advancements in the field of scalable video coding call for efficient hash functions that are also robust against the temporal, spatial and bit rate scalability features of the these coding schemes. This paper presents a new algorithm to extract hashes of scalably coded videos using the 3D discrete wavelet transform. A hash of a video is computed at the group-of-frames level from the spatio-temporal low-pass bands of the wavelet-transformed groups-of-frames. For each group-of-frames, the spatio-temporal low-pass band is divided into perceptual blocks and a hash is derived from the cumulative averages of their averages. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness of the hash function against the scalability features and the common content-preserving operations as well as the sensitivity to the various types of content differences. Two critical properties of the hash function, diffusion and confusion, are also examined.