Video steganography with perturbed macroblock partition

Abstract

In this paper, with a novel data representation named macroblock partition mode, an effective steganography integrated with H.264/AVC compression is proposed. The main principle is to improve the steganographic security in two directions. First, to embed messages, an internal process of H.264 compression, i.e., the macroblock partition, is slightly perturbed, hence the compression compliance is ensured. Second, to minimize the embedding impact, a high efficient double-layered structure is deliberately designed. In the first layer, the syndrome-trellis codes (STCs) is utilized to perform adaptive embedding, and the costs in visual quality and compression efficiency are both considered to construct the distortion model. In the second layer, facilitated by the wet paper codes (WPCs), an expected 3-bit per change gain in embedding efficiency is obtained.