Efficient Block-Based Transparent Encryption for H.264/SVC Bitstreams

• Main Authors: DENG, Robert H., DING, Xuhua, WU, Yongdong, WEI, Zhou
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: Data confidentiality; H.264/SVC; Transparent encryption; Scalability; Information Security
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1936; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00530-013-0326-0
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Taking advantage of the inter-layer prediction technique used in H.264/scalable video coding (H.264/SVC), in this paper we propose an efficient block-based encryption scheme (BBES) for encrypting H.264/SVC enhancement layers (ELs). BBES operates in three modes, namely, Intra-MB mode, Group-MB mode and 4Group-MB mode. All the three modes are effective in securing ELs, preserve the “adaptation-transparent” property of H.264/SVC, and are format-compliant to the H.264/SVC bitstream format specifications. Moreover, Intra-MB and Group-MB modes also possess the property we termed as “transcoding transparency”. Experimental results indicate that BBES has low computational complexity and small compression overhead. Thus, BBES is suitable for transparent encryption of H.264/SVC bitstreams in which ELs are encrypted but base layers are left in cleartext.