A Secure Video Steganography Based on the Intra-Prediction Mode (IPM) for H264

Recently, many video steganography algorithms based on the intra-prediction mode (IPM) have been adaptive steganography algorithms. These algorithms usually focus on the research about mapping rules and distortion functions while ignoring the fact that adaptive steganography may not be suitable for video steganography based on the intra-prediction mode; this is because the adaptive steganography algorithm must first calculate the loss of all cover before the first secret message is embedded. However, the modification of an IPM may change the pixel values of the current block and adjacent blocks, which will lead to the change of the loss of the following blocks. In order to avoid this problem, a new secure video steganography based on a novel embedding strategy is proposed in this paper. Video steganography is combined with video encoding. Firstly, the frame is encoded by an original encoder and all the relevant information is saved. The candidate block is found according to the relevant information and mapping rules. Then every qualified block is analyzed, and a one-bit message is embedded during intra-prediction encoding. At last, if the IPM of this block is changed, the values of the residual are modified in order to keep the optimality of the modified IPM. Experimental results indicate that our algorithm has good security performance and little impact on video quality.