English

Video Source Characterization Using Encoding and Encapsulation Characteristics

Cryptography and Security 2023-05-24 v4 Multimedia

Abstract

We introduce a new method for camera-model identification. Our approach combines two independent aspects of video file generation corresponding to video coding and media data encapsulation. To this end, a joint representation of the overall file metadata is developed and used in conjunction with a two-level hierarchical classification method. At the first level, our method groups videos into metaclasses considering several abstractions that represent high-level structural properties of file metadata. This is followed by a more nuanced classification of classes that comprise each metaclass. The method is evaluated on more than 20K videos obtained by combining four public video datasets. Tests show that a balanced accuracy of 91% is achieved in correctly identifying the class of a video among 119 video classes. This corresponds to an improvement of 6.5% over the conventional approach based on video file encapsulation characteristics. Furthermore, we investigate a setting relevant to forensic file recovery operations where file metadata cannot be located or are missing but video data is partially available. By estimating a partial list of encoding parameters from coded video data, we demonstrate that an identification accuracy of 57% can be achieved in camera-model identification in the absence of any other file metadata.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.02949,
  title  = {Video Source Characterization Using Encoding and Encapsulation Characteristics},
  author = {Enes Altinisik and Husrev Taha Sencar and Diram Tabaa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.02949},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:43:56.594Z