Video fingerprinting based on frame skipping

A video fingerprinting algorithm based on frame skipping is proposed in this work. At the encoder side, we skip video frames according to a pattern, specified by a fingerprint. The skipping pattern is designed such that the degradation of video quality is negligible. At the decoder side, the fingerprinted sequence is compared with the original sequence and the skipping pattern is reconstructed. Then, the watermark codeword is decoded from the skipping pattern. Since the selection of skipped frames is a combinatorial problem, the proposed algorithm can provide a large capacity for embedded information. Also, the proposed algorithm is inherently robust against spatial attacks, such as geometrical attacks and spatial filtering attacks. To improve the robustness against temporal attacks, such as frame rate reduction, we introduce the notion of error correction coding into the watermarking embedding. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is very robust against various attacks, while satisfying the transparency of embedded watermarks.