Methods and apparatus for identifying primary media content in a post-production media content presentation

An article of manufacture storing machine readable instructions which, when executed, cause a machine to:

• determine a first synthetic image corresponding to a first captured image representative of a secondary media content presentation including primary media content and other media content, the first synthetic image comprising a plurality of synthetic image subregions, each synthetic image subregion encoded to represent motion associated with a corresponding subregion of the first captured image;
• select a region of the first synthetic image comprising a plurality of connected synthetic image subregions of the first synthetic image together exhibiting substantially non-uniform motion;
• and
• when a shape of the selected region of the first synthetic image corresponds to a predefined shape, extract a region of the first captured image corresponding to the selected region of the first synthetic image to identify the primary media content.

A media content monitoring unit comprising:

• an image pre-processor to:
• determine a first synthetic image corresponding to a first captured image representative of a secondary media content presentation monitored by the media content monitoring unit, the first synthetic image comprising a plurality of synthetic image subregions, each synthetic image subregion encoded to represent motion associated with a corresponding subregion of the first captured image;
• select a region of the first synthetic image comprising a plurality of connected synthetic image subregions of the first synthetic image together exhibiting substantially non-uniform motion, the selected region excluding a portion of the first synthetic image;
• and
• when a shape of the selected region of the first synthetic image corresponds to a predefined shape, extract a region of the first captured image corresponding to the selected region of the first synthetic image to identify primary media content included in the secondary media content presentation;
• a signature generator to generate a signature from the region of the first captured image extracted by the image pre-processor;
• and
• a hint processor to process hint information associated with the region of the first captured image extracted by the image pre-processor to determine whether the primary media content corresponds to a commercial.