Audio Fingerprinting for Streaming Content Obscuring
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face difficulties in identifying and blocking undesirable intervening content segments, such as advertisements, during media streaming, as existing systems rely on identifiers that can be overridden by content providers due to financial agreements.
Innovation Solution
A content segment obscuring system that samples the initial portion of a content segment, determines a vector signature, and compares it to predefined reference signatures to identify and obscure unwanted content segments, using machine learning techniques and artificial neural networks to rapidly recognize and skip or replace these segments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If legacy systems use identifiers to block intervening content segments, then blocking capability is provided, but the blocking can be overridden by content providers due to financial agreements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces identifier-based blocking (mechanical/system-based identification) with audio fingerprinting technology. The audio fingerprint is a unique digital signature extracted from the audio content itself, making it impossible for content providers to override through financial agreements since the identification is based on the actual audio signal characteristics rather than controllable metadata identifiers.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates an audio fingerprint copy of the intervening content segment's audio signal. This fingerprint serves as a unique identifier that is derived from the content itself rather than from external metadata, ensuring that the blocking mechanism operates independently of content provider preferences or financial arrangements.
2Ease of operation
If the system identifies intervening content segments in real-time streaming, then user viewing experience is improved, but processing speed and accuracy requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by continuously analyzing and extracting audio fingerprints from incoming audio streams in real-time. The audio fingerprinting process is optimized to operate at high speed, allowing the system to identify and flag intervening content segments before they are fully presented to the user, enabling proactive blocking or replacement actions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the identification parameter from traditional metadata-based identifiers to audio signal-based fingerprints. This parameter change enables more accurate and reliable identification of content segments, as audio fingerprints are unique to each segment and cannot be easily confused or overridden, thereby improving measurement precision while maintaining real-time operation.
3Measurement precision
If audio fingerprinting is used to identify content segments, then identification accuracy improves, but computational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential audio fingerprint features from the full audio signal, rather than processing the entire audio stream in detail. This extraction process isolates the key identifying characteristics of each content segment, achieving high identification accuracy while significantly reducing computational complexity compared to full-signal analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
Obscuring systems and methods are operable to obscure an intervening content segment that a user does not wish to view and/or listen to if that particular intervening content segment is again received at a later time. An exemplary embodiment includes at least a content segment obscuring system that samples the decoded stream of information corresponding to an initial portion of the intervening content segment, determines a vector signature of the sampled initial portion of the intervening content segment, wherein the vector signature corresponds to at least one location and an orientation of a vector in a multi-dimensional vector space, and compares the vector signature with a plurality of predefined reference vector signatures. In response to the vector signature substantially corresponding to at least one of the plurality of predefined reference vector signatures, the intervening content segment is obscured with replacement content.