International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS

Advanced and Secured Video Steganography Using Least

Significant Bit and Discrete Wavelet Transform Techniques
Anchal Chander Lekha [1], Monika [2]
Department of Electronics & communication Engineering
L.R Institute of Engineering & Technology
Solan – India
ABSTRACT
Steganography is a technique used to transmit hidden information by modifying an audio signal in an imperceptible
manner and is an art of hiding information in ways that avert the revealing of hiding messages. The secure data
transmission over internet is achieved using Steganography. Video files are generally a collection of images. so
most of the presented techniques on images and audio can be applied to video files too. The great advantages of
video are the large amount of data that can be hidden inside and the fact that it is a moving stream of images. The
network provides a method of communication to distribute information to the masses. With the growth of data
communication over computer network, the security of information has become a major issue. Steganography and
cryptography are two different data hiding techniques. Cryptography, on the other hand obscures the content of the
message. In this research work we proposed a high capacity data embedding approach by the combining two
approaches LSB and DWT.
Keywords:-Steganography, Data hiding, File Security, Frame Extraction, LSB Technique, DWT algorithm
Steganography is a technique used to transmit hidden
I. INTRODUCTION information by modifying an audio signal in an
IMAGE PROCESSING imperceptible manner and is an art of hiding
information in ways that avert the revealing of hiding
Image processing is a technique for converting an messages. Video files are generally a collection of
image into digital form and performing operations, in images. So most of the presented techniques on
order to get some useful information from it. It is a images and audio can be applied to video files too.
type of signal dispensation in which input is image, Steganography simply means is the practice of
like video frame or photograph and output may be concealing a file, message, image, or video within
image or characteristics associated with that image. another file. Steganography is a combination of two
Usually Image Processing system includes treating words “stegano” means covered and “graphy” means
images as two dimensional signals while applying writing. Steganography[2] is an art of hiding the
already set signal processing methods to them. Image existence of the message so it does attract the
processing basically include three steps, first is to attention toward the secret message, hence third party
Importing the image, second to analyzing and or illegal person cannot be able to detect the
manipulating the image including compression, message.[3]
enhancement and spot patterns and last is to analyze Steganography techniques include hiding within text
the image to get required output. file, text in image or audio or video, images within
images, images within audios or videos, hiding
DATA HIDING messages in voice-over-IP, WLAN steganography is
Data hiding is used to embed any secret data into any also used for sending information over local area
file, the user has to enter a password and the same
network. The main difference between cryptography
password to be used to unhide the secret message.
and steganography, cryptography hides the message
but the message cannot be decoded until unless
STEGANOGRAPHY
public or private key is not known. On the other hand

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

steganography hides the existence of the message, steganography but most of the people are not able to
secret message is not difficult to decode in case of detect the presence of the message.[4]
Types of Steganography

Steganography

Text Image Audio Video

Figure 1: Types of Steganography

PREPROCESSING
The method of preprocessing in the propose solution is to remove noise from image. Noise particles may come in
sight due to grey scale variation in image. De-noising of image is necessary because noise can affect the final
results. So apply proper filter, median filter is applied because the results are efficient. To check its efficiency, we
will add noise to image first by using ‘add noise’ command.
There are different types of filters. Like linear filters and non-linear filters, adaptive filters, Gaussian filter among all
median filter works better. It is a non-linear filter mainly used for noise removal without disturbing the image. It is
more robust and retains maximum information of the image. It is widely used in digital image processing because in
many conditions while removing noise it prevents boundaries. It performs better than other filters. Command used
for median filter is ‘medfilt’.

ENHANCEMENT
While removing noise, some parts of the images become blur. So to improve the visual appearance of the image,
enhancement is applied. There are different techniques; among all histogram equalization is better. Histogram
equalization usually increases the contrast of foreground and background of image, both are bright or both are dark.
‘histeq’ command will be used for this function.

II. DISCRETE WAVELET TRANSFORMS

Wavelets are special functions which, in a form analogous to sines and cosines in Fourier analysis, are used as basal
functions for representing signals. For 2-D images, applying DWT corresponds to processing the image by 2-D
filters in each dimension. The filters divide the input image into four non-overlapping multi-resolution sub-bands
LL1, LH1, HL1 and HH1. The sub-band LL1 represents the coarse-scale DWT coefficients while the sub-bands
LH1, HL1 and HH1 represent the fine-scale of DWT coefficients. To obtain the next coarser scale of wavelet
coefficients, the sub-band LL1 is further processed until some final scale N is reached. When N is reached, 3N+1
sub-bands consisting of the multi-resolution sub-bands LLx and LHx, HLx and HHx is obtained where x ranges
from 1 until N. Due to its excellent spatial-frequency localization properties, the DWT is very suitable to identify the
areas in the host image where a watermark can be embedded effectively. In particular, this property allows the
exploitation of the masking effect of the human visual system such that if a DWT coefficient is modified, only the
region to that coefficient will be modified. In general, most of the image energy is concentrated at the lower
frequency sub-bands LLx and therefore embedding watermarks in these sub-bands may degrade the image
significantly. Embedding in the low frequency sub-bands however, could increase robustness significantly. On the
other hand, the high frequency sub-bands HHx include the edges and textures of the image and the human eye is not

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

generally sensitive to changes in such sub-bands. This allows the watermark to be embedded without being
perceived.
The wavelet transform is computed separately for different segments of the time-domain signal at different
frequencies. Multi-resolution analysis: analyzes the signal at different frequencies giving different resolutions. Good
for signal having high frequency components for short durations and low frequency components for long
duration.e.g. Images and video frames. Wavelet transform decomposes a signal into a set of basic functions. These
basis functions are called wavelets.

(a) Original image (b) 1st level DWT (c) 2nd level DWT

Figure 2: DWT compression

III. LSB TECHNIQUE

The Least Significant Bit (LSB) is one of the main techniques in spatial domain image Steganography. The LSB is
the lowest significant bit in the byte value of the image pixel. The LSB based image steganography embeds the
secret in the least significant bits of pixel values of the cover image (CVR).

Figure 3: Proposed LSB algorithm

ENCODING PROCESS
In this process firstly read video. Convert video onto frames. Select random frames and compressed frames by DWT
domain. Then secret image convert into binary. Secret image embedding into compressed frames using bit exoring.

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

Read and convert video file

Video file can be easily read by giving full path of video file in MATLAB command window. Convert video into
frames. After reading video file, discrete wavelets transform is applied for compression of video file. Compression is
usually used to decrease the size of video file, so to embed easily.
Compression of video frames file
Compression technique or transform, DWT (Discrete wavelets Transform) is used for the compression of video file.
It can easily compress video without disturbing the video files that much. After the compression phase, it is also
checked that whether the audio file is in its original form. So compression doesn’t affect the video file. Now After
compression, encryption is applied to secret image file to enhance the security and to keep it secret from intruders.
Read secret image and bit conversion image:
Image file can be easily read by giving full path of image file in MATLAB command window. Convert secret image
pixels from string to binary numbers. Binary numbers are easily embedded into any file.
Generate secret key and embed secret image into video
Generate secret key for embedding secret image into video file. The binary numbers of image embed into
compressed video frames using bitxoring.
Reconstruction of video file
After embedding secret image into video then reconstructs the video by IDWT (inverse discrete wavelet frames).
The reconstructs video has secret data for security.

Input video Secret image

Frames Bit conversion

separation

Applied DWT
Enter embedded
secret key

Embedding secret
into frames

Applied IDWT

Embedded video
with secret image

Figure 4(i): Encoding process

Decoding process
Decoding is actually reverse process from encoding. For decoding process first video with secret image is received.
The first is to enter extract secret key which is same as encoding process. Then videos is converted in to frames and
apply IDWT on frames in which secret image is embedded.
Decoding process is:

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

1. Embedded data retrieved.

2. Retrieve text key and image

3. Retrieve the original secret file.

Embedded data retrieved: After compilation, the embedded image as well as the secret data is retrieved at the end
of the process. Original video and embedded video both are identical and change cannot be seen through naked eye.

Retrieve text key and image: Retrieved Embedded message is in text a image using the same way with encryption
algorithm.

Retrieve the original video file: After conversion, original video file is retrieved and it can be checked by playing
that video file in Matlab.

Steps of decoding:

Step1. Read video in which secret image is embedded.

Step2. Covert video into frames and separate frames in which image is embedding.

Step3. Applied DWT on frames for separate image from frames.

Step4. By DWT frames are compressed and show the image.

Step5. Decode the secret image.

Step6. Applied IDWT and reconstruct the video.

Video with secret Extracted secret

image
Image

Enter Extraction
key

Separation of Applied DWT Scrambled secret

frames on frames image from frames

Figure 4(ii): Decoding process

IV. RESULTS inputting video on axis 1 with Select video button.

After clicking on SELECT VIDEO button, folder
Figure 5 shows the method of inserting data from with different videos will open, we have to select a
GUI. Two axes, two edit boxes and four buttons are video in which we have to hide out secret image.
used for implementation. It shows the method for

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

Fig.no.7 showed below Enter Secret key

Fig.no.5 Method for inputting video on axis 1
Figure 6 shows the method for inserting the secret
image on axis 2 with select secret image.
Figure 8 shows the extraction key in dialogue box,
extraction and embedding keys must be same
otherwise program will show error. Secret key is
actually a password to open hidden data, that means
data is password protected.

Fig.no.6 Method for secret image on axis 2

Figure 7 shows dialogue box to enter Secret key for
the purpose of embedding. Secret key will be the key
we have to share with the person we are sending
secret data hidden in video. Secret key must be same
if we have to extract image.
Fig.no.8 video on embedding image with secret key.
Figure 9 shows Extracted secret image. Extracted
secret image will appear in axis box.

Fig.no.9 Extracted secret image

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 6 Issue 2, Mar - Apr 2018

NO. OF PSNR VALUE MSE VALUE Journal of Computer Science and Security
IMAGES (IJCSS) (2009).
IMAGE 1 65.8712 0.016957 [3] Zamani, Mazdak, et al. "An approach to
IMAGE 2 64.6984 0.022215 improve the robustness of substitution
IMAGE 3 67.7642 0.010966 techniques of audio
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IMAGE 5 65.5181 0.018394 Information Technology, 2009. ICCSIT
IMAGE 6 62.8136 0.034286 2009. 2nd IEEE International Conference
IMAGE 7 56.5943 0.14357 on. IEEE, (2009).
IMAGE 8 57.8434 0.10768 [4] Sherly, A. P., and P. P. Amritha. "A
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