Patent ID: 8560319

Claim:
A method of classifying a segment of a multimedia program as one of a news segment and a commercial segment, comprising: (a) receiving an audio portion of the multimedia segment; (b) sampling the audio portion at a predetermined rate; (c) combining a predetermined number of samples into a clip; (d) determining a plurality of signal property features of the clip, the signal property features including a smooth pitch ratio; (e) analyzing the plurality of signal property features of the clip using a linear approximation algorithm, the linear approximation algorithm being a hard threshold classifier algorithm wherein it is determined whether each of the plurality of signal property features of the clip satisfies a respective threshold value; and (f) characterizing the clip as the commercial segment if all of the plurality of signal property features of the clip satisfy the respective threshold value, and characterizing the multimedia program segment as the news segment if at least one of the plurality of signal property features of the clip does not satisfy the respective threshold value.