Information hiding technology can effectively guarantee information security by concealing secret information imperceptibly in digital media through the redundancy of multimedia data and human eye masking characteristics. The combination of a video coding process and standard is a critical approach to video information hiding technology because digital video is commonly stored and transmitted in compressed form. The next-generation high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard plays an important role in high-definition video applications due to its high encoding efficiency. Consequently

the information hiding method for HEVC has a theoretical value and practical significance. However

existing HEVC information hiding technology exhibits deficiencies

such as the rapid increase in bit rate and the degradation of video quality. Accordingly

a new large-capacity information hiding method for HEVC based on the just noticeable coding distortion (JNCD) model is proposed. The JNCD model is presented as a type of visual perception model for HEVC by considering the blurring and block distortion of the coding process. This model can effectively remove human perception redundancy and achieve higher subjective perceptual quality at the same bit rate. The optimal quantization parameter (QP) value for each coding unit is computed by using this model. An exploiting modification direction algorithm is utilized to adjust the optimal QP values and embed secret information. The algorithm maximizes the modified direction

thereby increasing embedding capacity from the usual four states to five states

in which a maximum of one bit data is changed for the two consecutive coded QP values. The extraction of information can be performed directly without referring to the original video

which can be satisfied with real-time and blind extraction performance. The HEVC reference software HM16.0 is used

and five sequences with different resolutions are tested. After the secret information is embedded

experimental results show that the average PSNR of the video test sequence is 41.16 dB. Unlike existing information hiding methods

our approach does not only maintain good subjective and objective video quality

but also increases information hiding capacity by approximately 2 times

on average. The proposed method can effectively increase embedding capacity

prevent bit rate increases

and ensure the quality of the original video image. A secret key is used to scramble and encrypt the secret information

which increases information security. Only the user who holds the key can decrypt and obtain the secret information at the decoding side. Embedding the secret information into the frame with the highest priority prevents information loss caused by packet loss and dropped frames in the channel transmission. This process also effectively guarantees video perception quality. The proposed method fulfills the invisibility

security

and real-time requirements of information hiding

thereby making it suitable for military organizations

financial institutions

commercial markets

and other secure communication fields.