Methods for removing unwanted signals from media signal

• US 20060104437A1
• Filed: 08/22/2003
• Published: 05/18/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Popcatcher AB
• Original Assignee: Popcatcher AB
• Inventors: Berg, Rickard, Berg, Jakob, Ahrne, Tomas
• Granted Patent: US 7,593,850 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/412
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 7/30 Compression speech analysis-synthesis for redundancy reduction G10L19/00; for image communication H04N; Expansion; Suppression of unnecessary data, e.g. redundancy reduction

Abstract

The invention relates to an improved method to achieve signals which are essentially devoid of unwanted signal components by using a search and comparison process. The present invention provides a method to receive media signals through receiving means, said media signals containing unwanted signal components, to chose a representation for said media signals and process these media signals in such a way that said unwanted signal components are essentially removed and the remaining signal components are saved, said method comprising the steps of: from the media signals chose a search key representation; in a search track conduct a first search after a signal representation that contains a section which is essentially identical with said search key; to compare a first segment, which lies before and after said search key, with a second segment which lies before and after said section, which is essentially identical with the first search key; from said first segment and said second segment find a first common segment; said method being characterized in that said common segment is stored in said memory domain as a signal representation without unwanted signal components.

Claims

1. A method for receiving media signals (1) through receiving means, said media signals (1) containing unwanted signal components;

to choose a representation for said media signals and to process these media signals (1) in such a way that said unwanted signal components are essentially removed and the remaining signal components are saved, said method comprising the steps of;

from the media signals (1) choose a first search key representation (20);

in a search track (30) conduct a first search after determining a signal representation (10) that contains a section (11) which is essentially identical with said first search key representation (20);

compare a first segment (40), which lies before and after said search key (20), with a second segment (41) which lies before and after said section (11) which is essentially identical with the first search key representation (20);

from said first segment (40) and said second segment (41) find a first common segment (44);

loading said common segment (44) into a memory domain (100); and

storing said segment in said memory domain (100) as a signal representation (70) without unwanted signal components.

2. Method according to claim 1, wherein said first search (20) is conducted among media signal representations (70) stored in the memory domain (100).

3. Method according to claim 1, wherein if no essentially identical copy of the search key representation was found, carrying out the further step of conducting further searches in the search track to locate essentially identical copies of said search key representations and when such a copy is found conducting a comparison process to find common segments, and continuing this process until a final common segment is achieved or until the process is terminated, and then loading said common segment into the memory domain (100) as a signal representation.

4. Method according to claim 1, including the step of removing all redundant signal representations from the search track if the search track contains a multiple of essentially identical signal representations, to thereby achieve a better use of the memory capacity.

5. Method according to claim 1, wherein a signal representation (73) that lies between two signal representations (71, 73) contained in the memory domain is removed if said signal representation (73) has a time duration that is shorter than a predetermined threshold value.

6. Method according to claim 1, wherein the section of a signal representation (73) that lies between two signal representations contained in the memory domain is saved if the setting of the search key was activated during this section.

7. Method according to claim 1, wherein said search track consist of every N:

th sample of a signal representation (10).

8. Method according to claim 1, wherein the search tracks, when recorded, are normalized to have a common amplitude and sound level.

9. Method according to claim 1, wherein the signal representations (70) are selected from one or more of the group consisting of representations of music, talk, noise, jingles of and logotypes.

10. Method according to claim 1, wherein the signal representations are one or more representations selected from the group consisting of music and movies.

11. A method for receiving media signals (1) through receiving means, said media signals (1) containing unwanted signal components;

to chose a representation for said media signals and to process the these media signals (1) in such a way that said unwanted signal components are essentially removed and the remaining signal components are saved, said method comprising the steps of;

from the media signals (1) choosing a search key representation (20);

in a search track (30) conducting a first search after a signal representation (10) that contains a section (11) which is essentially identical with said search key (20);

comparing a first segment (40), which lies before and after said search key (20), with a second segment (41) which lies before and after said section (11), which is essentially identical with the first search key (20);

from said first segment (40) and said second segment (41) finding a first common segment (44); and

removing said final common segment (44) from the search track when it appears in the search track.

12. Method according to claim 11, wherein said first search (20) is conducted among media signal representations stored in the memory domain (70).

13. Method according to claim 11, wherein said search track consist of every N:

th sample of a signal representation (10).

14. Method according to claim 11, wherein the signal representations (70) are selected from one or more of the group consisting of representations of music, talk, noise, jingles and logotypes.

15. Method according to claim 11, wherein the signal representations are one or more representations selected from the group consisting of music and movies.