NAL level encryption for scalable video coding

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an encryption scheme for Scalable Video Coding (SVC). The proposed video encryption method provides secured SVC contents with selective encryption scheme. The main feature of this scheme is making use of the characteristics of Scalable Video Coding. The encryption procedures are carried out at the Network Abstractor Layer (NAL) level. Of all NAL units, Instantaneous Decoding Refresh (IDR) Picture, Sequence Parameter Set (SPS), and Picture Parameter Set (PPS) are encrypted with a stream cipher. Leak EXtraction (LEX) algorithm is adopted to reduce computational cost. Experiments were performed to verify the proposed methods using the joint scalable video model (JSVM), and the experimental results show that the proposed methods could provide high security, low computational cost as well as support a video encryption with scalability function. © 2008 Springer.