ACR on Connected Device

Enables synchronization between what a user is
listening to or viewing and interactive applications
and/or advertisements.

Experiences and Technology that Connect People to Media

Enswers is the leading provider of ACR technology and systems, enabling revolutionary interactive applications that are transforming the entertainment experience on a new generation of powerful, connected devices.

What is ACR?

ACR stands for Automatic Content Recognition, which is audiovisual search technology applied to content identification. Simply put, ACR can take any photograph, music, movie, or TV show and identify what the content is. ACR enables services, applications, and connected devices – smart phones, tablets, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, smart TVs – to deliver social entertainment experiences. By providing information on content playing at a particular point in time on a specific device, ACR technology powers contextually-aware services and applications that offer a more engaging and interactive user experience.

Imagine fantasy football stats available on your television screen synced live to the game, watching a pizza commercial and being able to immediately order the pizza (with a discount!) in just one click, sharing the latest SNL clip directly from your TV to your Twitter, or scrolling through your Facebook news feed and being able to identify and watch another SNL clip that your friend posted. ACR is the technology that makes it all possible.

Audio Recognition

Image Recognition

Enswers is capable of detecting and analyzing exactly what viewers are watching on screen at any given moment.

Mobile Device

ACR technology enables second-screen entertainment applications on iOS or Android devices to – sync directly to live and pre-recorded television, identify music playing on the radio, and recognize physical images, posters, and books – powering a new generation of interactive mobile experiences.

Smart TV

With ACR technology embedded into connected televisions, manufacturers can provide a platform that enables applications to deliver engaging interactive programming synchronized in real-time to what the user is watching on the television.

Our core intellectual property performs automatic content recognition through audiovisual fingerprinting, signal processing, large-scale clustering, and computer vision.

What is audiovisual fingerprinting?

Enswers technology analyzes image, audio, and video content to create a digital fingerprint, which is a unique pattern that identifies the content. Similar to a human fingerprint where your thumb is enough information to identify you as a person, digital fingerprints reduce audiovisual content to document the inherent characteristics of the media. With Enswers’ audiovisual fingerprinting technology, an hour of video can be reduced to less than 250kb of data. The combination of optimized fingerprints and large-scale clustering technology enables millions of hours of content to be processed in a scalable, efficient manner.

How do ACR systems work?

ACR is performed by fingerprinting audiovisual data in real-time to create a multimedia search query. The fingerprint query is then used to search against a database of fingerprints cataloguing content and related information. Enswers’ has developed ACR systems that use broadcast monitoring along with audio and video fingerprint generation tools provided to content owners in order to create a large and comprehensive content fingerprint database. Every day, Enswers identifies content for millions of queries against thousands of hours of audio and video content, while processing hundreds of media files and live feeds into its database.

Fingerprinting vs Watermarking

Audiovisual fingerprints can be used to analyze any image, audio, and video content. Fingerprinting does not embed any information and is derived and computed from the intrinsic properties of the content itself – this can include audio waveforms (waveforms, frequencies, timing) or frame characteristics (color, texture, resolution, format, shape, luminosity) – which is robust in its ability to survive audio and video compression, A-to-D conversion, and other transformations that distort content. Watermarks must be embedded into the content itself and no two watermarking technologies are compatible, limiting the effectiveness of watermarking to only the content that has been pre-processed with an embedded watermark. By using audiovisual fingerprinting technology, Enswers’ ACR systems are fast, scalable, and work with any multimedia content.

A Guide to the New Connected Environment

Content Providers

Are you a content creator, studio, license holder, or network? With interactive social TV or mobile applications powered by ACR technology, you can keep your audience engaged with next-generation digital consumption experiences.

Electronics Manufacturers

Are you a Smart TV, set-top box, or mobile device manufacturer? Top electronics manufacturers use Enswers’ ACR technology to create smart application platforms powered with content identification, interactive event delivery, and detailed analytics providing actionable insights.

Brands

Are you a brand manager, advertising agency, or marketer? Engage your customers, increase brand reach, and drive purchases with interactive experiences on iOS and Android mobile devices, tablets, PCs, and Smart TVs. ACR technology can provide a unique and engaging digital experience to the consumer – from click-to-action promotions to social sharing to precise demographic targeting – that allows your voice to rise above the rest of the marketplace.

Clients, Partners we work with