SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONITORING AND RECOGNIZING BROADCAST DATA

• US 20080208851A1
• Filed: 02/27/2007
• Published: 08/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/27/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Landmark Digital Services LLC
• Original Assignee: Landmark Digital Services LLC
• Inventors: Briggs, Darren P., Wardwell, Richard C.
• Granted Patent: US 8,453,170 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/6
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/14 for monitoring programmes
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 2201/90 characterised by the use of signatures
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/372 Programme
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/58 of audio determination or detection of speech characteristics in general G10L25/00; speech recognition in general G10L15/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/59 of video recognising characters or patterns in general G06F18/00, G06V20/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/73 using meta-information

Abstract

A system for monitoring and recognizing audio broadcasts is described. The system includes a plurality of geographically distributed monitoring stations, each of the monitoring stations receiving unknown audio data from a plurality of audio broadcasts. A recognition system receives the unknown audio data from the plurality of monitoring stations and compares the unknown audio data against a database of signature files. The database of signature files, or index sets, corresponds to a library of known audio files, such that the recognition system is able to identify known audio files in the unknown audio stream as a result of the comparison. The system further includes a nervous system able to monitor and configure the plurality of monitoring stations and the recognition system, and a heuristics and reporting system able to analyze the results of the comparison performed by the recognition system and use metadata associated with each of the known audio files to generate a report of the contents of plurality of audio broadcasts.

Claims

1. A broadcast monitoring and recognition system comprising:

at least one monitoring station receiving broadcast data from at least one broadcast media stream;

a recognition system receiving the broadcast data from the at least one monitoring station, the recognition system including a database of signature files, each signature file corresponding to a know media file, the recognition system operable to compare the broadcast data against the signature files to determine the identity of media elements in the broadcast data; and

an analysis and reporting system connected to the recognition system and operable to generate a report identifying the medial elements in the broadcast data which correspond to known media files.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the recognition system compares the broadcast data against the signature files by generating signatures for the broadcast data and comparing the signatures for the broadcast data to the signature files.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the recognition system is comprised of a plurality of servers, the plurality of servers including aggregation servers and recognition servers, the aggregation servers receiving the broadcast data and sending the broadcast data to the recognition servers for identification.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the recognition servers are organized in clusters, each cluster comprising a plurality of recognition servers, and wherein each cluster includes at least a subset of the signature files in the database of signature files.

5. The system of claim 3 further comprising a nervous system operable to monitor and control the monitoring stations and the recognition system.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the nervous system sends configuration information to each of the at least one monitoring stations and each of the aggregation servers and recognition servers.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the nervous system is operable to reassign the function of the servers in the recognition system.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the analysis and reporting system uses heuristic analysis to analyze the data from the recognition system.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the analysis and reporting system is operable to generate reports based on the heuristic analysis.

10. The system of claim 1 further including a storage area network operable to store the data received by and generated by the monitoring and recognition system.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the known media files and the database of signatures comprise a reference library.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the reference library further comprises metadata for each known media file.

13. The system of claim 1 wherein the broadcast data is audio data.

14. The system of claim 1 wherein the broadcast data is video data.

15. A method of monitoring and recognizing broadcast data comprising:

receiving and aggregating broadcast data from a plurality of broadcast sources;

generating signatures of the broadcast data;

comparing the signatures for the broadcast data against signature files from a database of signature files, each signature file corresponding to a known media file; and

analyzing the results of the comparison to determine the contents of the broadcast data.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising generating a report based on the analysis of the comparison.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising using metadata associated with each signature file in the generation of the report.

18. The system of claim 15 wherein the broadcast data is audio data.

19. The system of claim 15 wherein the broadcast data is video data.

20. A system for monitoring and recognizing audio broadcasts, the system comprising:

a plurality of geographically distributed monitoring stations, each of the monitoring stations receiving unknown audio data from a plurality of audio broadcasts;

a recognition system receiving the unknown audio data from the plurality of monitoring stations and comparing the unknown audio data against a database of signature files, where the database of signature files corresponds to a library of known audio files, and the recognition system is able to identify audio files in the unknown audio stream as a result of the comparison;

a nervous system able to monitor and configure the plurality of monitoring stations and the recognition system; and

a heuristics and reporting system able to analyze the results of the comparison performed by the recognition system and use metadata associated with each of the known audio files to generate a report of the contents of plurality of audio broadcasts.

21. The system of claim 20 wherein the recognition system is comprised of a plurality of servers, the plurality of servers including aggregation servers and recognition servers, the aggregation servers receiving the broadcast data and sending the broadcast data to the recognition servers for identification.

22. The system of claim 21 wherein the recognition servers are organized in clusters, each cluster comprising a plurality of recognition servers.

23. The system of claim 22 wherein each cluster includes at least a subset of the signature files in the database of signature files.

24. The system of claim 20 wherein the broadcast data is audio data.

25. The system of claim 20 wherein the broadcast data is video data.

26. The system of claim 20 wherein the broadcast is an over the air radio broadcast.

27. The system of claim 20 wherein the broadcast is a satellite radio broadcast.

28. The system of claim 20 wherein the broadcast is an Internet broadcast.