Multi-level data hiding for digital image and video

Previous works on data hiding generally targeted on a specific tradeoff between capacity and robustness. This results in overestimation of the processing noise under some situations and/or underestimation under some other situations, hence limits the overall performance. In this paper, we propose a multi-level data hiding scheme which is able to convey secondary data in high rate when noise is not severe and can also convey some data reliably under heavy distortion. The proposed scheme is motivated by a two- category classification of embedding schemes and by a study on detection performance of spread spectrum watermarking. The multi- level data hiding has been successfully applied to both digital image and video, and can be used for applications such as copy control.