Media monitoring, management and information system

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for monitoring transmissions of media content (such as audio and audiovisual content) in order to obtain independent and objective data regarding the use of specific media content recordings or works within the transmissions. Processing and reporting of such data is provided in various ways to serve a variety of business needs. Methods for employing content identification technology to efficiently and automatically obtain reliable, accurate, and precise monitoring data are also disclosed. Various information products and services based on such monitoring systems are proposed.

Description

[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 681,953 filed on Oct. 8, 2003, which claims priority from provisional application No. 60 / 418,597 filed on Oct. 15, 2002, the entire contents of which is hereby incorporated by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates generally to systems for monitoring transmissions of media content (such as audio and audiovisual content) in order to obtain independent and objective data regarding the use of specific media content recordings or works within said transmissions. The invention also relates to the processing and reporting of such data in various ways to serve a variety of business needs. More particularly, the invention relates to methods for employing content identification technology to efficiently and automatically obtain reliable, accurate, and precise monitoring data. The invention further relates to methods for producing information products and services based on such mo...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention provides a system and method for monitoring and managing broadcast multi-media content. The system uses a combination of redundant receivers and combined analysis of multiple copies of the same transmitted content to improve monitoring accuracy and effectiveness. The system can detect and measure the quality of the received transmission or the transmission channel, and can differentiate between multiple points of origin of a composite transmission. The system can also extract information from the embedded multimedia content and use it to estimate the duration of embedded clips and the quality of the transmission channel. The system can also examine the presence of a valid watermark and assess the success of the embedding process. Overall, the system provides reliable and comprehensive monitoring methods that overcome various deficiencies of prior art systems."

Problems solved by technology

Such fingerprinting techniques have the disadvantage of requiring complicated search algorithms for comparing the fingerprints that are extracted from broadcast segments to a large database of previously stored fingerprints.

In addition, they require a sizeable database of stored fingerprints which only grows in size and complexity as the monitoring service is expanded to include newly produced content.

The primary disadvantage of such systems is their vulnerability to format conversion and filtering of the broadcast signals during distribution of the content.

For example, data inserted in the vertical blanking intervals (VBI) of an NTSC format video signal may be lost if the video signal is converted from NTSC to MPEG format.

Extraction of reliable identification information under more severe channel impairments, however, usually necessitates increasing the strength of the embedded watermark.

This, in turn, compromises visual and / or audio quality of the broadcast segment.

In addition, these systems usually fail to withstand combinations of such unintentional impairments or intentional attacks.

It is also possible to monitor both audio and audiovisual content through the use of audio watermarking, whereas image or video-based watermarking fails to address the monitoring of exclusively audio content.

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