An Embedding /Extracting Method of Audio Watermark Information for High Quality Stereo Music

Since the introduction of MP3 players, CD recordings have gradually been vanishing, and the music consuming environment of music users is shifting to mobile devices. The introduction of smart devices has increased the utilization of music through music playback, mass storage, and search functions that are integrated into smartphones and tablets. At the time of initial MP3 player supply, the bitrate of the compressed music contents generally was 128 Kbps. However, as increasing of the demand for high quality music, sound quality of 384 Kbps appeared. Recently, music content of FLAC (Free License Audio Codec) format using lossless compression method is becoming popular. The download service of many music sites in Korea has classified by unlimited download with technical protection and limited download without technical protection. Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology is used as a technical protection measure for unlimited download, but it can only be used with authenticated devices that have DRM installed. Even if music purchased by the user, it cannot be used by other devices. On the contrary, in the case of music that is limited in quantity but not technically protected, there is no way to enforce anyone who distributes it, and in the case of high quality music such as FLAC, the loss is greater. In this paper, the author proposes an audio watermarking technology for copyright protection of high quality stereo music. Two kinds of information, "Copyright" and "Copy_free", are generated by using the turbo code. The two watermarks are composed of 9 bytes (72 bits). If turbo code is applied for error correction, the amount of information to be inserted as 222 bits increases. The 222-bit watermark was expanded to 1024 bits to be robust against additional errors and finally used as a watermark to insert into stereo music. Turbo code is a way to recover raw data if the damaged amount is less than 15% even if part of the code is damaged due to attack of watermarked content. It can be extended to 1024 bits or it can find 222 bits from some damaged contents by increasing the probability, the watermark itself has made it more resistant to attack. The proposed algorithm uses quantization in DCT so that watermark can be detected efficiently and SNR can be improved when stereo music is converted into mono. As a result, on average SNR exceeded 40dB, resulting in sound quality improvements of over 10dB over traditional quantization methods. This is a very significant result because it means relatively 10 times improvement in sound quality. In addition, the sample length required for extracting the watermark can be extracted sufficiently if the length is shorter than 1 second, and the watermark can be completely extracted from music samples of less than one second in all of the MP3 compression having a bit rate of 128 Kbps. The conventional quantization method can extract the watermark with a length of only 1/10 compared to the case where the sampling of the 10-second length largely fails to extract the watermark. In this study, since the length of the watermark embedded into music is 72 bits, it provides sufficient capacity to embed necessary information for music. It is enough bits to identify the music distributed all over the world. 272 can identify $4*10^{21}$, so it can be used as an identifier and it can be used for copyright protection of high quality music service. The proposed algorithm can be used not only for high quality audio but also for development of watermarking algorithm in multimedia such as UHD (Ultra High Definition) TV and high-resolution image. In addition, with the development of digital devices, users are demanding high quality music in the music industry, and artificial intelligence assistant is coming along with high quality music and streaming service. The results of this study can be used to protect the rights of copyright holders in these industries.

고품질 스테레오 음악을 위한 오디오 워터마크 정보 삽입/추출 기술

본 논문에서는 스테레오 음악에 오디오 워터마크를 삽입하기 위한 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 스테레오 음악은 2개의 채널을 갖고 있기 때문에 기존 워터마킹 기술은 일반적으로 각 채널을 독립적으로 생각하고 처리하는 경우가 많다. 그러나 스테레오를 모노로 변환하는 과정에서 워터마크의 손실이 발생하는 경우가 많이 발생할 수 있다. 제안한 알고리즘은 스테레오를 모노로 변환하더라도 워터마크의 손실이 발생하지 않도록 워터마크를 삽입할 때 스테레오와 모노변환의 특성을 이용하였다. 제안된 알고리즘에 사용된 오디오 워터마크는 "Copyright"와 "Copy_free"라는 두 가지 정보를 터보코드를 이용하여 생성하였다. 두 워터마크는 9바이트(72비트)로 이루어져 있으며, 오류정정을 위하여 터보코드를 적용하면 222비트로 삽입해야 하는 정보량이 늘어난다. 222비트의 워터마크는 추가적인 오류에 강인하도록 1024비트로 확장하여 최종적으로 스테레오 음악에 삽입할 워터마크로 사용하였다. 평균적으로 SNR은 40dB를 넘어서서 전통적인 양자화 방식보다 10dB 이상의 음질 개선을 가져왔다. 이는 상대적으로 10배의 음질 개선도를 의미하는 것으로 매우 유의미한 결과이다. 또한 워터마크의 추출에 필요한 샘플길이는 1초 이내의 길이면 충분히 추출이 가능하고, 128Kbps의 비트레이트를 갖는 MP3 압축에 대해서도 모두 1초 이내 길이의 음악 샘플로부터 워터마크의 완전한 추출이 가능하였다. 전통적인 양자화 방식이 10초 길이의 샘플을 이용해도 대부분 워터마크의 추출에 실패한 것에 비하면 1/10에 불과한 길이로 워터마크의 추출이 가능하다.