A format-compliant configurable encryption framework for access control of multimedia

We present a framework for access control of standard-compliant video bitstreams for entertainment purposes. The approach leverages well-known encryption algorithms and maintains standard-compliance of the encrypted bitstream. The standard compliance feature guarantees the inheritance of the error resiliency properties of the video compression standards, and works with many existing network bandwidth adaptation and error control techniques that have been developed for standard-compliant compressed video, thus making it especially suitable for wireless multimedia applications. Standard compliance also allows subsequent signal processing techniques to be applied to the encrypted bitstream. The approach can be applied to any of the common video coding standards. It is also capable of providing layered compromises between security, complexity, delay, bit overhead, etc.