Watermarking of compressed multimedia using error-resilient VLCs

Error-resilient variable length codes (VLCs) have been proposed to counter bit errors over error-prone channels. In this work, we establish a linkage between channel coding and watermarking by observing that watermark bits, are, in effect, intentional bit errors. Using a recently introduced resynchronizing VLC, we have developed a compressed-domain watermarking algorithm where the inherent error-resilient property of the code is exploited to implement lossless, oblivious watermarking. The algorithm is implemented on MPEG-2 video.