Method and system for re-identifying broadcast segments using statistical profiles

A method for generating a statistical profile of a segment of successive frames of a broadcast segment for re-identifying the broadcast segment, comprising steps of:

• calculating at least an approximate mean value of a display attribute of each frame in a predefined set of the frames of the segment;
• binning the mean values of the frames, to derive at least one attribute distribution;
• and
• applying a statistical analysis to each of the at least one attribute distribution in order to produce a plurality of values of statistical properties that characterize the segment to be used to form the statistical profile for re-identifying the broadcast segment,
• wherein the step of calculating comprises:
• computing a first mean value of the attribute distributions;
• computing a mean measure of deviation from a second mean value of the attribute distributions;
• averaging the values of the respective display attributes of a predefined set of pixels of each frame in the predefined set of the frames, the predefined set of pixels being selected to be representative of all of the pixels in the frame;
• forming respective attribute distributions from respective subsets of the predefined set of frames in the segment;
• calculating the value of at least one statistical property for each of the respective attribute distributions, the each of the attribute distributions being indexed by a label of the subset from which it is formed;
• parsing the mean values of the frames generated by substantially all of the frames in the segment, into respective attribute distributions, each attribute distribution being generated from a sequential set of the frames in the segment, wherein the sequential sets used to generate the attribute distributions jointly include substantially all of the frames of the segment, and a sequence order of a particular sequential set in the segment indexes the attribute distribution generated with the particular sequential set;
• and
• multiply parsing the stream of the mean values to form a hierarchy of indexed attribute distributions wherein each particular attribute distribution is uniquely indexed by two whole numbers (n,r) where n is a level in the hierarchy, and r the sequence order of the sequential subset of frames used to generate the particular attribute distribution in an nth level parsing of the stream.