New patents are published by the USPTO on Tuesdays. This week's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital fingerprinting and digital watermarking. Assigned to Netflix, the first of this week's patents address techniques for identifying previously streamed portions of a media title to avoid repetitive playback. Assigned to Digimarc, the second patent addresses techniques for estimating watermark signal strength, an embedding process using the same, and related arrangements.
10,560,506, "Identifying previously streamed portions of a media title to avoid repetitive playback," assigned to Netfilx.
Abstract
A sequence analyzer compares different episodes of an episodic serial to identify portions of a current episode of the serial that have already been played back to a user. Those portions may include introductory material such as credits, or a recap section that includes content from previous episodes. The sequence analyzer parses previous episodes of the serial and selects a representative frame for each shot sequence. The sequence analyzer then generates a fingerprint for each shot sequence based on the associated representative frame. The sequence analyzer compares fingerprints associated with a current episode of the serial to fingerprints associated with one or more previous episodes of the serial to identify shot sequences that have already been played. The user may then skip those repeated sequences via a playback interface.
10,560,599, "Methods for estimating watermark signal strength, an embedding process using the same, and related arrangements," assigned to Digimarc.
Abstract
The present disclosure relates to advanced signal processing including signal embedding, digital watermarking and steganography. One method includes: obtaining image data representing imagery; using one or more multi-core processors, embedding a machine-readable signal into the image data, thereby generating transformed image data; obtaining substrate data, the substrate data associated with a substrate upon which the transformed image data is to be printed upon; obtaining printer data, the printer data associated with a printer that is anticipated to print the transformed image data upon the substrate; processing the transformed image data with reference to the substrate data and the printer data, thereby generating processed, transformed image data; estimating a signal strength of the machine-readable signal embedded within the processed, transformed image data, in which said estimating yields an estimated signal strength; and visually displaying the estimated signal strength spatially relative to the image data. Of course, other combinations are described as well.
