Robust DT CWT Based DIBR 3D Video Watermarking using Chrominance Embedding

The popularity of 3D video is increasing daily due to the availability of low-cost 3D televisions and high-speed Internet access. However, currently the contents of 3D video can be distributed illegally without any protection. For views generated using a depth-image-based rendering technique, not only the left and right views can be distributed as 3D content, but also the center, left, or right views individually as 2D content. As digital video watermarking is a possible way of protecting these views from unauthorized distribution, in this paper, we propose a digital watermarking method for depth-image-based rendered 3D video. In this method, the watermark is embedded in both of the chrominance channels of a YUV representation of the center view using the dual-tree complex wavelet transform. Then, the left and right views are generated from the watermarked center view and depth map using a depth-image based rendering technique. Finally, the watermark can be extracted from the center, left, and right views in a blind fashion without using the original unwatermarked center, left, or right views. This watermark is robust to geometric distortions, such as upscaling, rotation and cropping, downscaling to an arbitrary resolution, and the most common video distortions, including lossy compression and additive noise. Due to the approximate shift invariance characteristic of the dual-tree complex wavelet transform, the technique is robust against distortions in the left and right views generated using depth-image based rendering. The proposed method can also survive baseline distance adjustment and both 2D and 3D camcording.