An automated method of detecting potential commercials in one or more video data streams that contain (i) segments of program type content, and (ii) commercial content, the method comprising: (a) parsing, by the video processing engine, each video data stream into a plurality of segments, each segment having a predefined time length that is less than the time length of an average commercial; (b) creating, by a video processing engine, a first segment representation of each segment, the first segment representation of each segment being one or more audio fingerprints; (c) identifying, by a search engine that uses audio-based automated content recognition (ACR) and the audio fingerprints of the segments any repeating segments that are likely to be portions of potential commercials, each of the repeating segments corresponding to different segments of the video data stream that match each other based on their respective audio fingerprints; (d) creating, by the video processing engine, second segment representations of only the segments that correspond to the repeating segments identified in step (c), the second segment representations of the segments being one or more video fingerprints of the segments and one or more video fingerprints of the respective matching segments; (e) comparing the video fingerprints of the segments and video fingerprints of the respective matching segments in the video processing engine and determining a similarity score therebetween, wherein the video fingerprint comparison is performed only on the segments that correspond to the repeating segments identified in step (c); and (f) determining, using programmed rules in a rules engine that receives the similarity score, subsequent actions to be taken by a content processing platform that performs recognition processing of the content associated with the segments identified in step (c), wherein the determination made by the rules engine is based on the similarity score. (a) parsing, by the video processing engine, each video data stream into a plurality of segments, each segment having a predefined time length that is less than the time length of an average commercial; (b) creating, by a video processing engine, a first segment representation of each segment, the first segment representation of each segment being one or more audio fingerprints; (c) identifying, by a search engine that uses audio-based automated content recognition (ACR) and the audio fingerprints of the segments any repeating segments that are likely to be portions of potential commercials, each of the repeating segments corresponding to different segments of the video data stream that match each other based on their respective audio fingerprints; (d) creating, by the video processing engine, second segment representations of only the segments that correspond to the repeating segments identified in step (c), the second segment representations of the segments being one or more video fingerprints of the segments and one or more video fingerprints of the respective matching segments; (e) comparing the video fingerprints of the segments and video fingerprints of the respective matching segments in the video processing engine and determining a similarity score therebetween, wherein the video fingerprint comparison is performed only on the segments that correspond to the repeating segments identified in step (c); and (f) determining, using programmed rules in a rules engine that receives the similarity score, subsequent actions to be taken by a content processing platform that performs recognition processing of the content associated with the segments identified in step (c), wherein the determination made by the rules engine is based on the similarity score. <EOS>