On Demand Secure Scalable Video Streaming for Both Human and Machine Applications

Scalable video coding plays an essential role in supporting heterogeneous devices, network conditions, and application requirements in modern video streaming systems. However, most existing scalable coding approaches primarily optimize human perceptual quality and provide limited support for data privacy, as well as for machine analyses and the integration of heterogeneous sensor data. This limitation motivated the development of adaptive scalable video coding frameworks. The proposed approach is designed to serve both human viewers and automated analysis systems while ensuring high security and compression efficiency. The method adaptively encrypts selected layers during transmission to protect sensitive content without degrading decoding or analysis performance. Experimental evaluations on benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves superior rate distortion efficiency and reconstruction quality, while also improving machine analysis accuracy compared to existing traditional and learning-based codes. In video surveillance scenarios, where the base layer is preserved for analysis, the proposed scalable human machine coding (SHMC) method outperforms scalable extensions of H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), Scalable High Efficiency Video Coding (SHVC), reducing the average bit-per-pixel (bpp) by 26.38%, 30.76%, and 60.29% at equivalent mean Average Precision (mAP), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Multi-Scale Structural Similarity (MS-SSIM) levels. These results confirm the effectiveness of integrating scalable video coding with intelligent encryption for secure and efficient video transmission.