Information Hiding Based On Intra Prediction Modes For H.264/AVC

With the significant development of digital multimedia technology, its illegal use becomes increasingly serious and its security becomes more and more critical. Since the end of the 20th century, information hiding technology has been rapidly developing. At present, an important aspect of the research and application of multimedia information hiding technology is utilizing video as the host media. However, the video data is inseparable from compression.Based on intra prediction modes of H.264/AVC video standard, a novel information hiding algorithm is presented. It implements data hiding by modifying the intra prediction modes of qualified intra 4×4 luma blocks in I-frames. Based on a large number of statistical data, mapping rules are established between intra 4×4 prediction modes and the binary hiding bits. According to the particular rules, modes modification is performed under the indication of every hiding bit to embed information. The specific positions of host blocks are determined by the block's own feature associated with an embedding-position template which is indicated by the secret key. Under different template-design rules, the key space is very large.The retrieval of hidden information needs no original media, and merely requires decoding the intra prediction modes from bit stream rather than decoding the whole video. The implementation of the algorithm requires no complicated calculation, and thus is simple and fast. Experiments are designed in three aspects: the information hidden capability, the impact on video stream feature, and the impact on subjective and objective video, to validate the presented algorithm.