New pending patent applications are published by the USPTO on Thursdays. Today's Spotlight Applications address aspects of digital fingerprinting and digital watermarking. Assigned to Enswers (KR), the first of today's applications discloses techniques for advertisement detection based on fingerprints. Assigned to Thomson, the second application discloses techniques for increasing the strength of phase-based watermarking of an audio signal,
20160381432, "Advertisement detection system and method based on fingerprints," assigned to Enswers Co., Ltd. (KR).
Abstract
The present invention relates to an advertisement detection system based on fingerprints, and provides an advertisement detection systems based on fingerprints, including a content stream storage unit for storing broadcast content in real time, a section selection unit for selecting a reference section and a test section from broadcast content stored by the content stream storage unit, a fingerprint extraction unit for extracting fingerprints from the reference section and the test section selected by the section selection unit using one or more methods, a fingerprint matching unit for comparing the fingerprints from the test section and the reference section, extracted by the fingerprint extraction unit, with each other and then performing matching between the fingerprints, an advertisement section determination unit for determining advertisement segments from the test section based on results of the matching performed by the fingerprint matching.20160379653, "Method and apparatus for increasing the strength of phase-based watermarking of an audio signal," assigned to Thomson Licensing (FR).
Abstract
A challenge of audio watermarking systems in which an acoustic path is involved is the robustness against microphone pickup in case of surrounding noise. The strength of phase-based watermarking is increased by determining a masking threshold for a current frequency bin in a frequency/phase representation changing the phase based on that masking threshold and an allowed phase change value, calculating an allowed magnitude change value for the current frequency bin and calculating from an audio quality level value a magnitude change scaling factor for the magnitude change value, and increasing its magnitude accordingly.
