DIGITAL WATER MARKING

AND
IT’S APPLICATION IN VARIOUS MEDIA TYPES
G.Leela Sankar, III B.Tech, ECE, P.Jnananand, III B.Tech, ECE,
JNTUCE, Kakinada. JNTUCE, Kakinada.

1. ABSTRACT watermarking is classified basing on the ability to

In the wake of increasing copyright misuses, several withstand attacks, into robust and fragile
new technologies are developed to preserve the watermarking. Fragile watermark is capable of
authentication of information. Digital water marking detecting any minute transformation made to the
is one of them. It is a technique that allows us to add watermarked content of the host signal. It is easy to
hidden copyright notices, verification messages or embed this into the signal. This can be accomplished
any other useful information to the original signal. by accommodating it in the unimportant portions of
The hidden message can be a group of bits that the original data. But it cannot withstand wide range
describe something about the signal or about the of attacks. For the applications wherein wide range of
genuine author of the signal. The description can be attacks needs to be tolerated, a robust watermark is
about the name, place or something related to this. used.
Much of the research wo rk has been done in the field
of digital watermarking in the recent period of time.
In this paper, a brief description about various digital
water marking techniques for different media types is Original watermark
given. Watermark insertion and watermark decoding F
is described as well. The watermarking techniques
described for various media types include audio
water marking, video water marking, image water Watermarked
marking and text water marking. Some of the signal
Watermark F’ Distortion
properties and applications are also discussed. embedding medium

2. INTRODUCTION
To begin with, the meaning of “watermark”(on a Corrupted
paper) is a mark that is not perceptible to the naked signal
eye in ordinary circumstances but is visible when Actual F’’
focused through a special light. A digital water Host H
marked signal is also difficult to differentiate from
the original signal normal circumstances. In fact, Watermark
there should be no detectable difference between the decoding
original signal and watermarked signal. The desire to
communicate secretly is a human trait that dates back
to the earliest times. This led to the invention of
steganography at first and encryption later on. Before Decoded
Confidential signal
the origin of watermarking technique, there were two
key F”’
techniques called “steganography” and “encryption”.
C
Steganography takes its origin from the old Greek
language that means ‘cover writing’. It is nothing but,
a way of transmitting hidden messages between two Fig 1: block diagram of a watermarking system
persons. Encryption is used to provide
communication privacy and deny access to Robust watermarking techniques are especially useful
unauthorized persons from damaging the content. for military applications, authentication, copyright
The usage of the watermark does not limit the usage protection and so forth. Herein, the watermark is
of the original file in any way. Watermarking can placed in the significant portion of the data to be
basically be classified into visible and invisible watermarked.
watermarking. Visible watermarking obviously All in all, the digital watermarking techniques are
includes usage of logos, trademarks and other related expected to withstand assails including compression,
things for unique identification. Invisible
A/D and D/A conversion, linear and non-linear
filtering and additive noise as well.
3. WATERMARKING FOR VARIOUS
MEDIA TYPES TECHNIQUES
3.1 Digital audio watermarking
Here in, the watermark i.e. the digital audio
watermark consists of the information pertaining not
only to the creator of the audio information that could
be any one of several forms of song, music etc., but
also to the authenticated user of the audio
information. This allows that particular information
to be used by only the authorized user and no one
else. The watermark can also be used for secondary
applications other than authentication. e.g. providing
information about the song, album, style of tunes, etc.
This watermark is useful in voice conferencing halls
to indicate the person who is speaking at the moment.
This application can be extended to videoconferences
as well.
The method of inserting watermark consists of
concealing the watermark in the low frequency
components of the message signal (audio signal), so
that the insertion of watermark is not noticeable by
the human ear.
Partitioning Analysis for
Message Into frames spectral comp.
Signal
A This amount of time must be the same as
Elimination of low
frequency comp.
componenco
Insertion of
watermark
Watermarked
signal
Aw
Fig 2.block diagram for audio watermark insertion
• At first, the audio signal to be processed is
partitioned into some frames, allotting a
finite time interval to each frame.
• Following this, analysis is done to calculate
the spectral components, which is
accomplished using FFT, more often than
not. This process also allows us to find out
the power contained in each frame, which is
useful in the later parts of the method.
• From the above calculations, the low
frequency components are removed from
the signal.
• Now, the watermark is placed in the low
frequency region, where the low frequency
components are removed earlier on.
This finishes the process of inserting the
watermark in the audio file. Now that the
process of insertion is accomplished, the user
has to extract the watermark and get it verified
with his license to access the information in the
audio file. The process of extraction of
watermark is similar to the process of inserting
the watermark as well.
water
marked Partitioning Ananlysis
signal into frames using FFT
Carrier
processing
Fig 3. Block diagram for removal of watermark
from the audio watermarked file.
Ø The watermarked signal to be processed is
subjected to framing of some finite duration.
that of duration during insertion process.
Ø Once again, spectral analysis is carried out
using techniques such as FFT, to calculate
the low frequency components and the
power constituted in each frame as well.
Ø From the above analysis, the power
contained in the low frequency components
is observed which determines the
watermark.
Ideally, this watermark should be exact
reproduction of the original watermark that was
inserted during insertion process. This is
subje cted to certain constraints like power in
each frame.
3.2 Digital video watermarking
A watermark inserted in a video signal can be used
for DVD copy protection. First of all, the watermark
should satisfy the requirements of strength and
imperceptibility. Besides this, it can be bestowed on
to convey the information to restrict copying in many
ways such as copy never i.e. the DVD is copy
protected, copy no more i.e. it is possible to copy a
finite number of times, copy liberally i.e. it can be
copied any number of times, copy only once. The
design depends upon the content in the DVD.A
general process of digital video watermarking
consists of inserting a group of bits along with the
video frame to be transmitted. The process of
insertion of watermark is through a ‘hidden key’ that
is known to the transmitting person and the receiving
person as well.
Video
watermarking
actual video signal process watermarked
signal to be
transmitted
watermark
hidden key
Fig 4.video watermark insertion
Actual video signal refers to a single image of a
video sequence.
Now that, the watermark is inserted into an image of
a video sequence, it is susceptible to wide range of
attacks in the channel through which it is transmitted.
These attack could include deliberate attacks and
attacks by chance, i.e. not deliberately done. Some of
the deliberate attacks are reducing frames, conspiracy
and geometric attacks. Herein, the signal is not
completely damaged or distorted beyond use, for the
pirate who attacks thus would like to use it anyway.
Other range of attacks that the signal could suffer is
those that arise from the errors due to transmission
and also due to errors generated during processing of
the signal. Now, the process of extraction or removal
of watermark is an intricate process. This process
consists of extraction of watermark from the received
watermarked signal, provided the ‘hidden key’ is
known.
By the time the signal arrives at the
watermarking process, it might in a compressed form
i.e. it might have undergone compression techniques.
Compression is a technique that reduces the storage
space required for a digital form of the video signal.
This is essential to meet the bandwidth requirements.
So it is necessary that the watermark signal be
inserted directly into this signal, which in compressed
form without having to decode the video signal to
reduce intricacy.
Received signal Extraction
process watermark
Hidden key
Fig 5. Extraction of watermark from watermarked
signal
This is accomplished by changing the span of the
codes and subsequently inserting the watermark. This
eases the insertion process. The drawback to this
process is that the watermark is vulnerable to remove
entirely at the time of detection. To make the
watermark stable even after detection, the watermark
is inserted by imposing energy differences between
different parts of a video signal.
3.3 Image watermarking:
For watermarking a still image, the watermark is
directly inserted on to the picture information itself
such as colour, brightness, and luminescence etc. the
watermark may be inserted directly on to the pixels,
which are either in the spatial domain or in the
transform domain. Earliest form of spatial domain
techniques consists of inserting a finite number of
sequences of bits into the least significant data of the
host signal. This type of insertion provides for
efficient visible insertio n technique. Another
advantage of using this technique is that the
implementation requires very low cost. Later on this
technique was extended to two dimensions as well.
This also proved to be an effective fragile
watermarking technique. While decoding, a
correlation detector is used for the retrieval of
watermark. Another method where a correlation
detector is used does the watermarking by
introducing a texture-based watermark into the
region, which is quite identical to the original image.
This enhances the transparency between the
watermarked and the actual image.
Watermarking the image in transform domain comes
up with many advantages like capability of
withstanding the compression techniques.
3.4 Text watermarking:
Text watermarking is the process of inserting
watermark into the text for preserving the creator’s
identity. This is especially applicable to such
valuable texts such as poetry. An earlier form of
watermarking the texts was accomplished by
inserting spaces in specific parts of the text. The
disadvantage associated with this form of
watermarking was that it was quite easy to remove
the watermark. Later on, watermarks were placed in
the text that depends on linguistic properties like
synonyms, sequence of words etc. minor
modifications are made to characters, and such
characters are used for watermarking. Text
watermarking schemes are applicable to any type of
texts from usual word documents to PDF files. At
detection stage, the watermark is removed by
processing which involves the correction for noise,
and distortion introduced, if any (during the insertion
process) as well. This scheme protects texts like
poetry well as, the changes brought about in the text
will damage the worth of it. This is also resistant to
attacks like photocopying because these do not alter
the watermark.
1. FUNDAMENTAL
2. FUNDAMENTAL
Fig 6. Diagram showing changed ‘N’(character
alteration).
. watermark embedding and detection process could
1. Here the word “fundamental” is printed in
the ordinary way.
2. It shows the word “fundamental”, in which
the letter ‘N’ is modified slightly.
4. WATERMARK INSERTION:
Mid frequency components are chosen for
embedding the watermark in a simple way, owing to
the shortcomings with the low frequency components
and high frequency components. The difficulty with
the low frequency components is that they are highly
susceptible to distortion. The high frequency
components do not bear much of the information
reliably, since their removal from the actual signal
does not affect the signal’s quality too much. The
watermarking process is a process known to all, thus
the safety of the signal completely depends up on the
hidden key (confidential key ‘C’ shown in the Fig 1).
This key ‘C’ determines the sequence of bits, which
are to be embedded into the host signal. The key acts
in such a way that, it would be difficult (almost
impossible) to recover the original signal without
knowing the confidential key ‘C’. There are simple
additive watermarking methods, which can be
represented using simple mathematical equation:
F’= H + P
Where F’ is the watermarked signal, ‘H’ is the host
signal (from fig 1). The new signal ‘P’ is nothing but
the signal originating from the hidden key ‘C’ and the
original watermark ‘F’. This method of
representation is not applicable to all embedding
processes. In some of the processes, the properties of
the host signal are used for the embedding process.
5. WATERMARK DECODING:
‘Detection’ and ‘identification’ are not the same. The
method of deciding about whether a signal received
contains a watermark or not is ‘detection’. But,
identification is the actual process of decoding the
unique watermark from a finite number of possible
choices. Two kinds of errors could occur at the
detection. The first one is detection of a watermark in
the received signal when it really does not exist. The
second one is quite opposite to this. Herein, the
watermark, which inherently exists in the received
data, is not detected. Synchronization failure between
disable the entire communication process. This could
result in attacks on the signal.
6. APPLICATIONS:
Some of the additional applications of digital
watermarking are broadcast monitoring, usage of
contractual watermarks for special purposes, secret
communication and copy control.
Broadcast monitoring:
Watermarks are used in broadcast monitoring by
inserting watermarks in the message that is to be
transmitted. This is done before signal (audio or
video) is broadcasted.
Contractual watermarks:
These types of watermarks are also called
fingerprints. One of the applications of these is in the
distribution of daily film copies. Many people and
organizations might be involved in the distribution of
a film. In this process, there could be possibilities of
leakage of certain copies. Placing a watermark in
every copy, which contains the information of the
recipient, can prevent this. This doesn’t affect the
actual version of the copy, and it is possible to
identify the person or source responsible for leakage,
if any.
Secret communication:
This was one of the earliest applications of
watermarking technique. It is a process of transmitted
secret messages in concealed form. Specially
designed programs are there to accomplish these
tasks.
Copy control:
Many watermarks do not actually prevent the
copying of content into which they are embedded, but
serve as identification marks of the genuine owner of
it. But using certain mechanisms that detect the
watermarks and inhibit the copying of the
information, it is possible to preserve the integrity of
the information.
7. PROPERTIES:
Some of the properties of the watermarking
techniques are strength, fidelity, cost involved, and
the tamper resistance.
Strength:
Strength is an important parameter because it
decides the capacity of the watermarked signal to
withstand the wide range of attacks. Especially, the
image and video signals need to tolerate the attacks
including the geometric ones. Besides, it should be
able to endure ordinary attacks like A to D
conversion and lossy conformations. More often than
not, a watermarked signal is expected to endure
common processing transformations only during the
time interval between the insertion and decoding of
the signal. The toughness of the signal is not limited
to any one constraint, but it can be extended to many
others. It means, a signal, which is capable of
withstanding an attack, may not be able to tolerate
another. Consequently, the signal is made to
withstand attacks, which may differ from one
application to another. Where there is only a
necessity to know whether any distortion of signal
has occurred and nothing else, the strength is not at
all a constraint. Instead, the watermark may be a
fragile one. The situation may be quite different in
some other cases. One such case is where the attacks
are quite capricious. Herein, the signal is
watermarked in such a fashion it can withstand every
possible distortion.
Tamper resistance:
If there is a possibility of aggressive or
antagonistic attacks, then the watermarked signal
must be tamper resistant. Tamper resistance is
immaterial if there are slim chances of aggressive
attacks. The watermarked signal must be tamper
resistant to attacks like passive, active, and
falsification attacks. In passive form of attacks, the
attacker just likes to determine whether a watermark
is present in the signal or not. In contrast to this, an
active attack is one in which the attacker tries to
remove the watermark from the watermarked signal.
There is yet another form of active attack, called
collusion attack wherein, the attacker tries to
reconstruct the replica with no watermark from
different sets of copies with different watermarks. In
falsification attacks, the attacker inserts another
watermark into the genuine one, thereby, changing
the identification of the copy.
Reliability:
A watermarked signal may be considered to be
highly reliable, if the distortion caused by the
inclusion of watermark is quite unnoticeable by the
human eye.
Cost involved:
Depending upon the application, the number of
watermark embedders and watermark detectors vary.
Their working speeds vary as well according to the
type of application. The cost involved thus varies
greatly depending up on all these constraints.
8. CONCLUSION:
Digital watermarking is an outstanding technology
that can serve a wide range of applications in various
media types. But, the employment of schemes
depends upon the requirements that may vary widely.
A sound knowledge of communication techniques
and signal processing methods is essential for
efficient development of watermarking techniques.
Besides this, the attacks that the signal is expected to
endure the assessment of the amount of distortion
that the signal suffered which in turn determine the
efficacy of the system and the effective cost involved
need to be taken into consideration while designing
watermarking technique for a particular application.
Thus the standards for all the applications don’t
remain alike.

9. REFERENCES:

1. Digital communications,
By Bernard Sklar.

2. Digital image processing

By Ganzaly and Woods.

3. JPEG based image compression for low bit rate

coding
By P.P.Gandhi.
4. www.scholar.google.com