Audio-based synchronization to media
AssigneeSpot411 Technologies, Inc.
InventorsHans M. Glitsch, Ajay Shah
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
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.
Claims21
A method comprising:
- receiving an audio portion of a time-based media presentation with a microphone of a client device;
- sampling the audio on the client device 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 including a plurality of bits, each one of the plurality of hashes providing a non-unique representation of a segment of the audio portion, and each one of the plurality of hashes having a known relative time offset to each other one of the plurality of hashes;
- transmitting the plurality of hashes and a unique identifier for the time-based media presentation to a server;
- receiving from the server a time offset indicative of a current time offset within the time-based media presentation;
- and
- synchronizing an application on the client device to the time-based media presentation based upon the time offset.
A computer program product for audio-based synchronization, the computer program product 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 an audio portion of a time-based media presentation with a microphone of a client device;
- sampling the audio on the client device 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 including a plurality of bits, each one of the plurality of hashes providing a non-unique representation of a segment of the audio portion, and each one of the plurality of hashes having a known relative time offset to each other one of the plurality of hashes;
- transmitting the plurality of hashes and a unique identifier for the time-based media presentation to a server;
- receiving from the server a time offset indicative of a current time offset within the time-based media presentation;
- and
- synchronizing an application on the client device to the time-based media presentation based upon the time offset.
21-125. (canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.