Approaching low rate video protection by means of informed watermarking

As a reaction to the continuous increasing of processing and storage capabilities in the digital world, the intellectual right holders consider watermarking as an appropriate tool to protect their property. Emerging from the mobile network environments, the youngest member of the watermarking application family is the low rate video protection. This paper reconsiders an outstanding informed watermarking method developed for grey level still images and adapts and extends it for such colour video. The experiments were carried out in cooperation with the SFR wireless service provider in France and pointed to the significant improvements in some practical applications. The main advantage consists in the data payload which can be increased up to 1000 bits per frame but the related drawback resides in the relative lack of robustness. These results also allow a comparison between the spread spectrum and informed watermarking techniques, under the mobile network constraints.