New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of this week's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital fingerprinting. Assigned to Facebook, the first patent addresses techniques for generating a reference audio fingerprint for an audio signal associated with an event. Assigned to Gracenote, the second patent addresses techniques for identifying video content via color-based fingerprint matching
9,466,317, "Generating a reference audio fingerprint for an audio signal associated with an event," assigned to Facebook.
Abstract
An audio identification system generates a reference audio fingerprint associated with an event. The reference audio fingerprint is generated from samples of an audio signal associated with the event captured by multiple devices. To generate the reference audio fingerprint, fingerprints are generated from each sample, and the generated fingerprints are temporally aligned. Fingerprints associated a temporally overlapping portion of the audio signal are averaged, and the average value is associated with the temporally overlapping portion of the audio signal and included in the reference audio fingerprint. The reference audio fingerprint is stored along with identifying information, such as an event name, an event time, an event date, or other information describing the event associated with the audio signal from which the samples were captured.9,465,995, "Identifying video content via color-based fingerprint matching," assigned to Gracenote.
Abstract
Systems and methods of identifying unknown video content are described. An example method may include receiving a first fingerprint and a second fingerprint. The first fingerprint may be a color-based fingerprint derived from colors in a portion of the unknown video content, and the second fingerprint may be at least partially based on a feature other than the colors of the unknown video content. A reference database of reference fingerprints may then be queried using one of the first fingerprint or the second fingerprint to obtain a candidate group of fingerprints. The candidate group of fingerprints may then be queried using the other of the first fingerprint and the second fingerprint to identify at least one query fingerprint. The unknown video content may then be identified using the at least one query fingerprint. For example, the second fingerprint may be a luminance-based fingerprint derived from luminance in the unknown video content.
