Patent ID: 8892570

Claim:
A method, comprising the steps of: maintaining a multimedia fingerprint database that stores reference fingerprints in one or more storage devices, wherein each of the reference fingerprints comprises up to a maximum fingerprint length of fingerprint bits; wherein maintaining the multimedia fingerprint database comprises dynamically configuring one or more of search parameters for searching the multimedia fingerprint database, the search parameters comprising: a fingerprint length, wherein the fingerprint length is not greater than the maximum fingerprint length and represents a number of first fingerprint bits, in each of the reference fingerprints stored in the multimedia fingerprint database, that are to be used for matching with a query fingerprint; an index length, wherein the index length is not greater than the fingerprint length and represents a number of second fingerprint bits, in each of the reference fingerprints, that are used for indexing the reference fingerprints in the multimedia fingerprint database; or a threshold, wherein the threshold is to be used for determining whether a query multimedia object from which the query fingerprint is derived is identified with a reference multimedia object from which a reference fingerprint in the multimedia fingerprints is derived; wherein one or more of the fingerprint length, the index length, or the threshold are assigned one or more different values at a first time from one or more values assigned to the one or more of the fingerprint length, the index length, or the threshold at a second different time; wherein the dynamic configuration step comprises the steps of: automatically determining and assigning values to one or more of the fingerprint length, the index length, or the threshold; subsequently using the values of the one or more of the fingerprint index length, or the threshold to determine matches between one or more query fingerprints derived from one or more query multimedia objects and the reference fingerprints in the multimedia fingerprint databases; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.