- Rockin’ Patent®: US Patent No. 9,786,298
- Filed: 5 October 2016
- In the name of: Source Digital Inc
- Title: Audio Fingerprinting Based On Audio Energy Characteristics
- What’s claimed: ”A method of audio fingerprinting comprising: obtaining audio samples of a piece of audio, each of the audio samples corresponding to a specific time; generating frequency representations of the audio samples, the frequency representations being divided in frequency bands; identifying energy regions in the frequency bands, each of the energy regions being one of an increasing energy region and a decreasing energy region, an increasing energy region defined as a time region within one of the frequency bands during which audio energy increases from a start time to an end time of the time region and a decreasing energy region defined as a time region within one of the frequency bands during which audio energy decreases from a start time to an end time of the time region, wherein the identifying the energy regions includes ignoring a time region within the one of the frequency bands during which audio energy fluctuates such that net energy change during the time region is zero from a start time to an end time of the time region; analyzing portions of the identified energy regions appearing within time windows to generate hashes of features of the piece of audio, each hash of features corresponding to portions of the identified energy regions appearing in a respective time window, each feature defined as a numeric value that encodes information representing: a frequency band of an energy region appearing in the respective time window, whether the energy region appearing in the respective time window is an increasing energy region or whether the energy region appearing in the respective time window is a decreasing energy region, and a placement of the energy region appearing in the respective time window, the placement of the energy region appearing in the respective time window corresponding to one of: whether the energy region appearing in the respective time window starts before and ends after the respective time window, whether the energy region appearing in the respective time window starts before and ends within the respective time window, whether the energy region appearing in the respective time window starts within and ends after the respective time window, and whether the energy region appearing in the respective time window starts within and ends within the respective time window; and storing each hash of features together with the specific time.”
- Why this patent rocks: This patent appears to relate to Source Digital Inc’s method of audio fingerprinting, involving the obtaining of audio samples corresponding to energy characteristics within the content. One source, BroadcastBeat, claims that this patent “takes audio fingerprinting a step further, ensuring content-based integrity verification by pinpointing the moment within the content to its corresponding data within a specific timeframe, based on user specific requests. Source Digital Inc claims that this method of fingerprinting for metadata uniquely allows viewers to access innovative new search strategies, by allowing the retrieval of any moment within content on any platform, simply by requesting the stored data.” For more information, see here.
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