Video content authentication techniques: a comprehensive survey

Abstract

In this digital day and age, we are becoming increasingly dependent on multimedia content, especially digital images and videos, to provide a reliable proof of occurrence of events. However, the availability of several sophisticated yet easy-to-use content editing software has led to great concern regarding the trustworthiness of such content. Consequently, over the past few years, visual media forensics has emerged as an indispensable research field, which basically deals with development of tools and techniques that help determine whether or not the digital content under consideration is authentic, i.e., an actual, unaltered representation of reality. Over the last two decades, this research field has demonstrated tremendous growth and innovation. This paper presents a comprehensive and scrutinizing bibliography addressing the published literature in the field of passive-blind video content authentication, with primary focus on forgery/tamper detection, video re-capture and phylogeny detection, and video anti-forensics and counter anti-forensics. Moreover, the paper intimately analyzes the research gaps found in the literature, provides worthy insight into the areas, where the contemporary research is lacking, and suggests certain courses of action that could assist developers and future researchers explore new avenues in the domain of video forensics. Our objective is to provide an overview suitable for both the researchers and practitioners already working in the field of digital video forensics, and for those researchers and general enthusiasts who are new to this field and are not yet completely equipped to assimilate the detailed and complicated technical aspects of video forensics.