A perceptual encryption scheme for HEVC video with lossless compression

Abstract

Aiming to protect the video content and facilitate online video consumption, a perceptual encryption scheme is proposed for high efficiency video coding (HEVC) video. Based on RC4 algorithm, a key stream generation method is constructed, whose proportion of “1” and “0” can be regulated. During HEVC encoding, four kinds of syntax elements including motion vector difference (MVD)’ sign, MVD’s amplitude, sign of the luma residual coefficient and sign of the chroma residual coefficient, are encrypted by the regulated key stream. Experimental results and analysis show that the proposed scheme has good perceptual protection for the video content, and some advantages such as low computational cost, format-compliance and no bitrate increase can be achieved. It provides an effective resolution for the paid video-on-demand services in smart cities.