Method and apparatus of managing visual content

An apparatus for use in managing visual content, the apparatus comprising:

• a fingerprint processor configured to receive via a communication network a stream of video fingerprints derived in a fingerprint generator that is physically separate from the fingerprint processor by an irreversible data reduction process from respective temporal regions within a particular visual content stream, the fingerprint processor including
• a window unit configured to receive said stream of video fingerprints and apply a time window,
• a frequency of occurrence histogram unit configured to derive the frequencies of occurrence of particular fingerprint values in each time window by converting each set of particular fingerprint values to a histogram,
• a statistical moment unit configured to derive statistical moments of said frequencies of occurrence, and
• a classifier configured to generate from said statistical moments metadata representing the type of the visual content to provide the metadata to a control system for managing video content distribution.

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising a computer program which causes programmable apparatus to implement a method of managing visual content, comprising the steps of:

• receiving a stream of video fingerprints, derived in a fingerprint generator by an irreversible data reduction process from respective temporal regions within a particular visual content stream, at a fingerprint processor that is physically separate from the fingerprint generator via a communication network;
• and
• processing said fingerprints in the fingerprint processor to generate metadata which is not directly encoded in the fingerprints;
• wherein said processing includes:
• windowing the stream of video fingerprints with a time window,
• deriving frequencies of occurrence of particular fingerprint values or ranges of fingerprint values within each time window by converting each set of particular fingerprint values to a histogram,
• determining statistical moments or entropy values of said frequencies of occurrence,
• comparing said statistical moments or entropy values with expected values for particular types of content,
• generating metadata representing the type of the visual content, and
• providing the metadata to a control system for managing video content distribution.