An efficient data hiding method using the intra prediction modes in HEVC

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard is highly contributive in data hiding. Combining the HEVC standard with data hiding methods is a complex task, and because the highly efficient coding process is a powerful attack, eliminating some of the original video data would not have a significant effect on obtaining the best compression rates and transmission efficiency. In this paper, an efficient secret data hiding method is proposed through intra prediction modes integrated with HEVC, where the intra prediction modes of HEVC encoded videos are applied as a secret data carrier obtained from the N smallest prediction units. Every ⌊log2[N + 1]⌋ + 1 secret bit is embedded in a set of N intra prediction modes, named carrier vectors, where 1 is added to or subtracted from one of these modes, resulting in the accomplished data hiding. Due to the fact that, at the most, only one intra prediction mode is modified and the N smallest prediction units are chosen, this method is contributive in appropriate data hiding performance and steganalysis. The experimental results indicate that the embedding capacity increases up to 50%, while obtaining the best capacity, rate and distortion trade-offs among the compared methods.