New pending patent applications are published by the USPTO on Thursdays. This week's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital fingerprinting. Assigned to Twitter, the first application addresses techniques for identification of concurrently broadcast time-based media. Assigned to DISH Technologies, the second application address techniques for pre-distribution identification of broadcast television content using audio fingerprints.
20180359042, "Identification of concurrently broadcast time-based media," assigned to Twitter.
Abstract
A real time messaging platform identifies an audio snippet of a time-based media (TBM) event. The messaging platform maintains a real time repository of concurrently broadcasting TBM events as well as a historical repository of previously broadcast TBM events. These repositories contain acoustic fingerprints of their respective TBM events. The messaging platform matches an acoustic fingerprint of the audio snippet with one of the stored acoustic fingerprints to identify the TBM event in the recorded snippet. To identify the TBM event, the messaging platform matches multiple overlapping reference audio segments of the reference audio stream with multiple test audio segments of the audio snippet. This allows the platform to account for time delays between the test and reference audio segments that would otherwise hinder the matching process.
20180359540, "Pre-distribution identification of broadcast television content using audio fingerprints," assigned to DISH Technologies.
Abstract
Systems, devices and methods are provided to automatically identify advertisements or other portions of a broadcast television stream before the stream is distributed via a cable, DBS, IPTV or other medium. The television broadcast is received at the data processing system, and audio content of the television broadcast is analyzed to generate an audio fingerprint of a portion of the audio content. The identified audio fingerprint are compared to audio fingerprints stored in a database to thereby identify the portion of the television broadcast based on the generated audio fingerprint. By identifying the contents of an actual broadcast prior to redistribution of the broadcast, additional actions may be taken that are unique to the identified content.
