Video Steganography Based on Optimized Motion Estimation Perturbation

In this paper, a novel motion vector-based video steganographic scheme is proposed, which is capable of withstanding the current best statistical detection method. With this scheme, secret message bits are embedded into motion vector (MV) values by slightly perturbing their motion estimation (ME) processes. In general, two measures are taken for steganographic security (statistical undetectability) enhancement. First, the ME perturbations are optimized ensuring the modified MVs are still local optimal, which essentially makes targeted detectors ineffective. Secondly, to minimize the overall embedding impact under a given relative payload, a double-layered coding structure is used to control the ME perturbations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves a much higher level of security compared with other existing MV-based approaches. Meanwhile, the reconstructed visual quality and the coding efficiency are slightly affected as well.