Reversible Video Data Hiding Using Zero QDCT Coefficient-Pairs
This is an incremental improvement for video compression and data hiding applications.
The paper tackles reversible data hiding in H.264/AVC videos by embedding information into zero QDCT coefficient-pairs in intra frames, achieving high embedding capacity and low distortion.
H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) is one of the most commonly used video compression standard currently. In this paper, we propose a Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) method based on H.264/AVC videos. In the proposed method, the macroblocks with intra-frame $4\times 4$ prediction modes in intra frames are first selected as embeddable blocks. Then, the last zero Quantized Discrete Cosine Transform (QDCT) coefficients in all $4\times 4$ blocks of the embeddable macroblocks are paired. In the following, a modification mapping rule based on making full use of modification directions are given. Finally, each zero coefficient-pair is changed by combining the given mapping rule with the to-be-embedded information bits. Since most of last QDCT coefficients in all $4\times 4$ blocks are zero and they are located in high frequency area. Therefore, the proposed method can obtain high embedding capacity and low distortion.