AUDIO-BASED SYNCHRONIZATION SERVER

• US 20110208334A1
• Filed: 04/28/2011
• Published: 08/25/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/27/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Spot411 Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Spot411 Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Shah, Ajay, Glitsch, Hans M.
• Application Number:
  US13/096,950
• Publication Number:
  US 20110208334A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/94
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/433 using audio data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/4393 Multimedia presentations, e.g. slide shows, multimedia albums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2407 Monitoring of transmitted content, e.g. distribution time, number of downloads arrangements for monitoring programmes for broadcast or for distribution combined with broadcast H04H20/14
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4394 involving operations for analysing the audio stream, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in audio streams arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of audio in broadcast systems H04H60/58

Abstract

An audio channel of a time-based media presentation provides a basis for synchronizing to the presentation across a variety of platforms independent of when and where the presentation is being viewed. By pre-processing the media into a series of non-unique hashes, and similarly processing an audio stream of the media captured at a client device, a comparison can be made that yields an accurate time offset within the presentation. The comparison may usefully be performed over a data network using a server that hosts data from the pre-processed media, and a variety of applications may be deployed on the client device based on the resulting synchronization.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a time-based media presentation that includes an audio portion;

sampling the audio to obtain a sequence of digital samples of the audio portion;

processing the sequence of digital samples to provide a plurality of hashes, each one of the plurality of hashes non-uniquely corresponding to one or more time offsets within the time-based media presentation;

storing the plurality of hashes and the one or more time offsets in a hash table on a server; and

configuring the server to respond to a request that contains a second plurality of hashes, each one of the second plurality of hashes having a predetermined relative offset to each other one of the second plurality of hashes, by retrieving from the hash table a plurality of candidate offsets within the time-based media presentation corresponding to the second plurality of hashes.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising transmitting the plurality of candidate offsets from the server to a client device that initiated the request.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising resolving the plurality of candidate offsets into an offset within the time-based media presentation that most closely corresponds to the plurality of candidate offsets on the client device.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising resolving the plurality of candidate offsets into an offset within the time-based media presentation that most closely corresponds to the plurality of candidate offsets and transmitting the offset to the client device that initiated the request.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising calculating on the server a plurality of bitwise variations to each one of the second plurality of hashes, thereby providing a third plurality of hashes representative of the second plurality of hashes and a number of bit errors therein, and retrieving any time offsets corresponding to each one of the third plurality of hashes as the plurality of candidate offsets.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the second plurality of hashes received by the server includes a number of bitwise variations to client-calculated hashes, wherein the number of bitwise variations are representative of potential bit errors in the client-calculated hashes.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing on the server a plurality of hash tables for each one of a plurality of time-based media presentations.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising receiving from a client device that initiated the request a unique identification of the one of the plurality of time-based media presentations from which the second plurality of hashes was obtained.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein the plurality of time-based media presentations include television broadcasts.

10. The method of claim 7 wherein the plurality of time-based media presentations include pre-recorded media distributed on one or more of a CD, a DVD, a Blu-ray Disc, and an HDDVD.

11. The method of claim 7 wherein the second plurality of hashes is obtained from a time shifted viewing of one of the plurality of time-based media presentations.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the sequence of digital samples to provide a plurality of hashes includes low pass filtering the sequence of digital samples.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the sequence of digital samples to provide a plurality of hashes includes normalizing a magnitude of the sequence of digital samples.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the sequence of digital samples includes windowing the sequence of digital samples to provide a series of overlapping sets of digital samples from the sequence of digital samples.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein processing the sequence of digital samples includes transforming each one of the overlapping sets of digital samples into a frequency-domain representation.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein processing the sequence of digital samples includes dividing the frequency-domain representation into a plurality of frequency bands and converting each one of the plurality of frequency bands into a binary value according to a relative power of the one of the plurality of frequency bands to the other ones of the plurality of frequency bands within the frequency-domain representation.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the binary value consists of a one or a zero.

18. A computer program product for audio-based synchronization comprising computer executable code embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium that, when executing on one or more computing devices, performs the steps of:

receiving a time-based media presentation that includes an audio portion;

sampling the audio to obtain a sequence of digital samples of the audio portion;

processing the sequence of digital samples to provide a plurality of hashes, each one of the plurality of hashes non-uniquely corresponding to one or more time offsets within the time-based media presentation;

storing the plurality of hashes and the one or more time offsets in a hash table on a server; and

responding to a request that contains a second plurality of hashes, each one of the second plurality of hashes having a predetermined relative offset to each other one of the second plurality of hashes, by retrieving from the hash table a plurality of candidate offsets within the media-based presentation corresponding to the second plurality of hashes.

19. A device comprising:

a database that stores a hash table, hash table containing a plurality of hashes, each one of the plurality of hashes processed from a sequence of digital samples in an audio portion of a time-based media presentation, wherein each one of the plurality of hashes non-uniquely corresponding to one or more time offsets within the time-based media presentation; and

a server coupled in a communicating relationship with the database and a data network, the server configured to respond to a request that contains a second plurality of hashes, each one of the second plurality of hashes having a predetermined relative offset to each other one of the second plurality of hashes, by retrieving from the hash table a plurality of candidate offsets within the time-based media presentation that corresponding to the second plurality of hashes.