Recoding-Resisted I-Frame Blind Watermarking Algorithm for H.264/AVC

A recoding-resisted blind watermark algorithm for H.264/AVC is proposed in this paper in consideration of the new features of this video coding standard. The watermark embedding is realized by modifying the DCT coefficients of each macroblock in I frames. In each Intra_4 × 4 macroblock, the watermark is embedded by modifying the high-frequency DCT coefficient of one specific subblock which has the biggest number of non-zero coefficients. The strength of embedding is determined by the quantization parameter. While in Intra_16 × 16 macroblocks, one DC coefficient is modified to realize the watermark embedding. The watermark can be extracted just by decoding each I frame and do not in need of the original video, which meets the requirements of the modern detection of real-time perfectly. Simulation results show that the algorithm brings little effect on distortion and bit-rate increase to the video, and has a good performance in the resistance to the recoding.