Patent applications are partial indicators of what companies and individual inventors have been thinking about. Both of today's applications address media fingerprinting. Assigned to UMC Technologies, the first application describes techniques for fingerprinting digital content. Assigned to Widevine, the second application describes certain techniques and uses of media fingerprinting.
20070217648, "Fingerprinting Digital Media Content," assigned to UMC Technologies Inc.
Abstract
A computer system and method that selects and records unique portions of media files (audio, video and graphical image, and other content) submitted for UMC cataloging. The unique fingerprint of the media is then stored in the associated UMC record for use by other computer systems to minimize duplicate claims of ownership relating to media which may be located on one or more owner controlled web servers connected to the Internet. In one embodiment, when a media file is being cataloged into the UMC database, the system performs an analysis of the media file to find a unique piece that can be saved as a fingerprint for the media file. This fingerprint is analyzed against the UMC database to locate duplicate fingerprints which may indicate either duplicate media or duplicate fingerprints for different media. In the case of duplicate fingerprints for different media a new analysis is of the new media is done to come up with a more unique fingerprint. This fingerprint is run against the database until a truly unique print is obtained. If a question of media duplication arises, the system notifies the audit administrator who will manually take over the investigation.
20070242826, "Audio/Video Identification Watermarking," assigned to Widevine.
Abstract
The invention is directed to marking audio/video (A/V) signals for use in tracing content to a source. An ID controller captures an A/V synchronization fingerprint from a master A/V signal, stores the fingerprint in a data store, and provides signals to an ID encoder to have encoded an identifier into a copy of the master A/V signal. The identifier is encoded to be persistent through actions such as capture, compression, and/or transcoding. In one embodiment, the identifier is encoded as a bit sequence, where each bit is encoded using an encoding technique that is hereinafter called a Mississippi encoding technique. The encoded identifier within the copied A/V signal may later be determined by extracting the fingerprint and comparing it to the stored fingerprint to determine the identifier. The identifier may then be used to trace a source of the copied A/V signal.
