Patent ID: 7325013

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for identifying a test stream by matching the test stream to a substream within a repository of standard streams, wherein the test stream is obtained from a series of samples of an event or a content item, and a substream comprising at least a portion of a standard stream in the repository, the method comprising: indexing a plurality of substreams according to a plurality of templates, each template specifying a number of bit positions, wherein a given template is associated with a plurality of buckets, each bucket referencing a group of substreams that have the same values at the bit positions specified by the template; for a plurality of buckets, marking the buckets, for which the bits in the test stream match the bits in the substreams of the Bucket at the bit positions specified by the template associated with the bucket; identifying a candidate set of substreams based on the occurrence in the marked buckets of each substream; testing the substreams of the candidate set to determine whether one or more of the substreams thatch the test stream within an error tolerance; and presenting a result of the testing.