End-To-End Security for Video Distribution: The Combination of Encryption, Watermarking, and Video Adaptation
Open accessAbstract
This article introduces the reader to the relevant techniques that are needed to implement such an end-to-end commutative security system for video distribution and presents a practical solution for encryption and watermarking compliant with H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and the upcoming High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video coding standards. To minimize the overhead and visual impact, a practical tradeoff between the security of the encryption routine, robust watermarking, and transcoding possibilities is investigated. We demonstrate that our combined commutative protection system effectively scrambles video streams, achieving structural similarity index (SSIM) values below 0.2 across a range of practical bit rates, while allowing robust watermarking and transcoding.
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Full encryption (naïve encryption) may result in significant performance overhead, especially if software-only encryption occurs.
“Consequently, it may result in a significant performance overhead, especially if software-only encryption occurs [7].”
From Effectiveness of crypto-transcoding for H.264/AVC and HEVC video bit-streams (2019) · cites this paper as [7]
“Oceans of choices for video scrambling” identifies encrypting the whole encoded bitstream as the naïve approach. But the passages do not say that this approach causes significant performance overhead or that software-only encryption makes such overhead worse; the overhead discussed in the Abstract concerns the proposed system, not that comparison. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.75)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredSelective encryption reduces the amount of data encrypted compared to full encryption.
“compared to full encryption, with selective encryption (SE) [8] not only is the amount of data encrypted reduced”
From Effectiveness of crypto-transcoding for H.264/AVC and HEVC video bit-streams (2019) · cites this paper as [8]
Some forms of selective encryption are decoder format-compatible.
“but some forms of SE are decoder format-compatible.”
From Effectiveness of crypto-transcoding for H.264/AVC and HEVC video bit-streams (2019) · cites this paper as [8]
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- Authors
- Boho, A., Van Wallendael, G., Dooms, A., De Cock, J., Braeckman, G., Schelkens, P., Preneel, B., & Van de Walle, R.
- Affiliations
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE)
- Venue
- IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
- Published
- 2013-03
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 97-107
- ISSN
- 1053-5888 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2135791560
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 7.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- biblio.ugent.be
- Locations
- IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Lirias (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- VUBIR (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- iMinds
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Signal Processing › Video Coding and Compression Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption
- Keywords
- video encryption, digital watermarking, video adaptation, video transcoding, H.264/AVC, HEVC, structural similarity index, video scrambling
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