Systems and methods for protecting elementary bitstreams incorporating independently encoded tiles

1. A non-transitory machine readable medium containing processor instructions, where execution of the instructions by a processor causes the processor to perform a process comprising:

receiving a video bitstream comprising a plurality of frames, each frame comprising a plurality of tiles that divide the frame into rectangular areas, wherein each tile is an independently encoded compression unit that is encoded without dependence from information in another tile;

determining locations of a plurality of tiles within the video bitstream based on information provided by at least one metadata header associated with a frame of video;

encrypting a portion of each of a plurality of tiles within the frame of video based on the determined locations; and

generating an output bitstream comprising the plurality of tiles including the encrypted portions of the tiles.

2. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1 , wherein each tile is an independently decodable portion of a particular frame of video such that it does not depend upon another compression unit within the particular frame in order to be decoded.

3. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1 , wherein encrypting the portion of each of the plurality of tiles comprises determining that tiles are enabled based on information within a header associated with the video bitstream.

4. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising encrypting a portion of every tile in a frame of video.

5. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 4 , wherein the portion is selected from the group consisting of i) a first N bytes of the tile, ii) a last N bytes of the tile, iii) a middle portion of N bytes within the tile and iv) a pattern of N bytes within the tile compression unit.

6. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the tiles are tiles within a High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard and the video bitstream is encoded based on the HEVC standard.

7. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 6 , further comprising:

parsing a Picture Parameter Set (PPS) of the HEVC video bitstream to identify the structure of the tiles within the video bitstream; and

encrypt portions of the tiles based on the structure.

8. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 1 , wherein encrypting the portion of each of the plurality of tiles comprises using a common encryption format (CENC) to encrypt the portions.

9. A content encoder comprising:

a memory; and

a processor configured to communicate with the memory, where the memory contains an encoder application;

wherein the encoder application directs the processor to:

receive a video bitstream comprising a plurality of frames, each frame comprising a plurality of independently encoded compression units within the frame, wherein the compression units are tiles within a High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard and the video bitstream is encoded based on the HEVC standard;

parse a Picture Parameter Set (PPS) of the HEVC video bitstream to identify the structure of the tiles within the video bitstream;

encrypt a portion of each of a plurality of tiles in a plurality of frames based on the structure; and

generate an output bitstream comprising the plurality of independently encoded compression units including the encrypted portions of the compression units.

10. The content encoder of claim 9 , wherein each tile is an independently decodable portion of a particular frame of video such that it does not depend upon another compression unit within the particular frame in order to be decoded.

11. The content encoder of claim 9 , wherein the encoder application further directs the processor to:

parse a metadata header to identify locations of compression units within a frame of video; and

encrypt a portion of the video bitstream based on the locations of the compression units.

12. The content encoder claim 9 , wherein encrypting the portion of each of the plurality of tiles comprises determining that tiles are enabled based on information within a header associated with the video bitstream.

13. The content encoder claim 9 , wherein the encoder application further directs the processor to encrypt a portion of every tile in a frame of video.

14. The content encoder of claim 13 , wherein the portion is selected from the group consisting of i) a first N bytes of the tile, ii) a last N bytes of the tile, iii) a middle portion of N bytes within the compression unit and iv) a pattern of N bytes within the tile.

15. The content encoder of claim 9 , wherein encrypting the portion of each of the plurality of tiles comprises using a common encryption format (CENC) to encrypt the portions.

16. A content decoder comprising:

a memory; and

a processor configured to communicate with the memory, where the memory contains a decoder application;

wherein the decoder application directs the processor to:

receive a video bitstream comprising plurality of frames, each frame comprising a plurality of tiles that divide the frame into rectangular areas, wherein each tile is an independently encoded compression unit that is encoded without dependence from information in another tile;

determine locations of encrypted portions of a plurality of tiles within the video bitstream based on information provided by at least one metadata header associated with a frame of video;

decrypt a portion of each of a plurality of tiles within the frame of video based on the determined locations; and

generate an output decoded video for playback.