A DCT-based robust video steganographic method using BCH error correcting codes

Due to the significant growth of video data over the Internet, it has become a popular choice for data hiding field. The performance of any steganographic algorithm relies on the embedding efficiency, embedding payload, and robustness against attackers. Low hidden ratio, less security, and low quality of stego videos are the major issues of many existing steganographic methods. In this paper, we propose a DCT-based robust video steganographic method using BCH codes. To improve the security of the proposed algorithm, a secret message is first encrypted and encoded by using BCH codes. Then, it is embedded into the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of video frames. The hidden message is embedded into DCT coefficients of each Y, U, and V planes excluding DC coefficients. The proposed algorithm is tested under two types of videos that contain slow and fast moving objects. The results of the proposed algorithm are compared with three existing methods. The results demonstrate better performance for the proposed algorithm than for the others. The hidden ratio of the proposed algorithm is approximately 27.53%, which is evaluated as a high hiding capacity with a minimal tradeoff of the visual quality. The robustness of the proposed algorithm was tested under different attacks.