New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital fingerprinting. Assigned to Gracenote, the first patent addresses techniques for generating and detecting a fingerprint functioning as a trigger marker in a multimedia signal. Assigned to NBCUniversal, the second patent addresses techniques for mapping affiliated graphs using video fingerprints
10,250,916, "Method and device for generating and detecting a fingerprint functioning as a trigger marker in a multimedia signal," assigned to Gracenote.
Abstract
A device is configured to perform a method that detects a trigger marker for an action corresponding to a segment of a multimedia signal. A fingerprint is generated based on the segment of the multimedia signal at a trigger time point. The generated fingerprint is stored in a database and communicated to the device. During playback of the multimedia signal, fingerprints of segments of the multimedia signal are generated and matched against fingerprints in the database. When a match is found, one or more associated actions for the segment are retrieved by the device. The trigger time point may be determined as a time point near or at the segment of the multimedia signal with the matched fingerprint. In this way, trigger markers for actions may be enabled without modifying the multimedia signal.
10,250,941," System and method for mapping affiliated graphs using video fingerprints," assigned to NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Abstract
Systems and methods for mapping affiliated graphs using video fingerprints are disclosed. Some embodiments include receiving first media corresponding to a first package encoding of a video content; identifying a first set of frames of the first media and generating video fingerprints for the first media; receiving second media corresponding to a second package encoding of the same video content; identifying a second set of frames of the second media and generating video fingerprints for the second media; generating a mapping comprising alignment information of one or more frames of the first set of frames and one or more frames of the second set of frames; and outputting the generated mapping for determining a switch point for switching from the first package encoding to the second package encoding during display of the video content.
