Patent ID: 8195451

Claim:
An apparatus for detecting speech and music within an audio signal, said apparatus comprising: an analyzer configured to perform a classification of a section of the audio signal, said section comprising a plurality of unclassified subsections, each unclassified subsection of the plurality of unclassified subsections having a predefined subsection duration within a range of one to several seconds, by (a) classifying each unclassified subsection of the plurality of unclassified subsections as at least one of a speech subsection and a music subsection to provide a plurality of classified subsections, and (b) determining a corresponding likelihood value for speech and music for each classified subsection of the plurality of classified subsections, said likelihood value for speech indicating the likelihood of a subsection to be a speech subsection, and said likelihood value for music indicating the likelihood of a subsection to be a music subsection; a recorder configured to, for each classified subsection of the plurality of classified subsections, store said corresponding likelihood value; a classification frequency calculator configured to (a) read each said corresponding likelihood value from the recorder, and (b) calculate at least a classification frequency for speech subsections and a classification frequency for music subsections based on an average likelihood value determined from each said corresponding likelihood value within a predetermined first time duration longer than the predefined subsection duration; and a detector configured to detect a continuous time period of a single type of audio signal based on the classification frequencies, by (a) registering a start of the continuous time period when, for at least a second time duration, the calculated classification frequency is not less than a first threshold value, and (b) registering an end of the continuous time period when, for at least a third time duration, the calculated classification frequency is not greater than a second threshold value, wherein: the classification frequency for speech subsections is calculated by equation 1: P s ⁡ ( t ) = ∑ k = 0 Len - 1 ⁢ p ⁡ ( t - k ) · S ⁡ ( t - k ) Len ( 1 ) where t is time, k is an integer, S(t) =1 if a subsection at time t is a speech subsection, S(t) =0 if a subsection at time t is not a speech subsection, Len is the predetermined first time duration, and p is the likelihood value, and the classification frequency for music subsections is calculated by equation 2: P m ⁡ ( t ) = ∑ k = 0 Len - 1 ⁢ p ⁡ ( t - k ) · M ⁡ ( t - k ) Len ( 2 ) where M(t)=1 if a subsection at time t is a music subsection, and M(t) =0 if a subsection at time t is not a music subsection.