Patent Document

BACKGROUND 
     1. Technical Field 
     Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to audio processing technologies, and particularly to an audio processing method using an electronic device 
     2. Description of Related Art 
     To protect the rights of owners of audio content such as music, watermarking technologies can be used to embed secret data of the owners in the frequency domain of an audio signal, thus providing proof of ownership of the audio content. However, a great number of operations, such as fast Fourier transformation (FFT) operations, are needed to embed the secret data in the frequency domain, which is inefficient. In addition, the secret data may be encoded as a pseudo-random sequence used to guide the modification of each magnitude or phase component of the frequency domain, and an ad hoc (“on-the-fly”) decoding process can adversely affect the acoustic quality of the audio signal. Therefore, there is room for improvement in the art. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a schematic block diagram illustrating one embodiment of an electronic device. 
         FIG. 2  is a schematic block diagram of one embodiment of an audio array generation module of  FIG. 1  including a plurality of sub-modules. 
         FIG. 3  is a flowchart of one embodiment of an audio processing method implemented by electronic device of  FIG. 1 . 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     The disclosure, including the accompanying drawings, is illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation. It should be noted that references to “an” or “one” embodiment in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean “at least one.” 
       FIG. 1  is a schematic block diagram illustrating one embodiment of an electronic device  100 . The electronic device  100  includes a storage  10 , a processor  20 , an audio acquisition device  30 , and an audio processing system  40 . The audio acquisition device  30  can be a microphone, configured to acquire sound to generate a first audio file. The storage  10  stores a first digital watermark including information of an owner of the first audio file to provide proof of ownership of the first audio file. The first digital watermark includes a plurality of discrete binary values, such as “001011010101.” In other embodiments, the first audio file can be another audio file prestored in the electronic device  100 . The electronic device  100  can be a computer, a server, a smart phone, or similar device. The electronic device  100  can include more or fewer components than those shown in the embodiment, or have a different configuration of the components. 
     The audio processing system  40  can include a plurality of programs in the form of one or more computerized instructions stored in the storage  10  and executed by the processor  20  to perform operations of the electronic device  200 . The audio processing system  40  processes a second audio file to determine whether or not the second audio file has a same owner as the first audio file, to protect the rights of the owner. In the embodiment, the audio processing system  40  includes a menu acquisition module  101 , an application search module  102 , a menu correlation module  103 , an icon display module  104 , and an application activation module  105 . Referring to  FIG. 2 , the audio array generation module  41  of the audio processing system  40  further includes a plurality of sub-modules, which are a first extracting sub-module  411 , a sample sub-module, a dividing sub-module  413 , a second extracting sub-module  414 , a calculation sub-module  415 , a determination sub-module  416 , and an output sub-module  417 . The storage  10  may be an external or embedded storage medium of the electronic device  100 , which can be a secure digital memory (SD) card, a Trans Flash (TF) card, a compact flash (CF) card, or a smart media (SM) card. 
     In general, the word “module”, as used herein, refers to logic embodied in hardware or firmware, or to a collection of software instructions, written in a programming language, such as, Java, C, or assembly. One or more software instructions in the modules can be embedded in firmware, such as in an erasable programmable read only memory (EPROM). The modules described herein can be implemented as either software and/or hardware modules and can be stored in any type of non-transitory computer-readable medium or other storage devices. Some non-limiting examples of non-transitory computer-readable medium include CDs, DVDs, BLU-RAY, flash memory, and hard disk drives. 
       FIG. 3  shows a flowchart of one embodiment of an audio processing method using the functional modules of the audio processing system  40  of  FIG. 1 . Depending on the embodiment, additional steps may be added, others removed, and the ordering of the steps may be changed. 
     In step S 100 , the audio array generation module  41  generates a first discrete audio array of the first audio file and a second discrete audio array of the second audio file according to audio signals of the first audio file and the second audio file. In this embodiment, the first discrete audio array and the second discrete audio array are generated using the sub-modules of the audio array generation module  41 . One process of generating the first discrete audio array of the first audio file and the second discrete audio array of the second audio file is described below. 
     The first extracting sub-module  411  extracts first audio signals having a frequency less than a predetermined frequency from the first audio file. In this embodiment, the predetermined frequency is about 0.4 KHz. The sample sub-module  412  samples the first audio signals to obtain a first sample sequence. The dividing sub-module  413  divides the first sample sequence into a plurality of first sub-sequences. Each first sub-sequence includes a number of sampling points. An amount of sampling points of each sub-sequence is equal to an amount of discrete binary values of the first digital watermark. The second extracting sub-module  414  extracts a sampling point having a maximum value in each first sub-sequence to form a first maximum value array. The first maximum value array includes the extracted sampling point of each first sub-sequence. The calculation sub-module  415  calculates a first average value of the sampling points of the first maximum value array. The determination sub-module  416  determines whether or not a value of each sampling point of the first maximum value array is greater than or equal to the first average value. If the value of a sampling point of the first maximum value array is greater than or equal to the first average value, the output sub-module  417  outputs a digital “1” to represent the value of the sampling point. If the value of a sampling point of the first maximum value array is less than the first average value, the output sub-module  417  outputs a digital “0” to represent the value of the sampling point. The output digit of the output sub-module  417  is arranged in a first predetermined array in sequence to form the first discrete audio array of the first audio file. 
     The second discrete audio array of the second audio file is generated using the same manner as above. In detail, the first extracting sub-module  411  extracts second audio signals having a frequency less than the predetermined frequency from the second audio file. The sample sub-module  412  samples the second audio signals to obtain a second sample sequence. The dividing sub-module  413  divides the second sample sequence into a plurality of second sub-sequences. Each second sub-sequence includes a number of sampling points. An amount of sampling points of each second sub-sequence is equal to the amount of the discrete binary values of the first digital watermark. The second extracting sub-module  414  extracts a sampling point having a maximum value in each second sub-sequence to form a second maximum value array. The second maximum value array includes the extracted sampling point of each second sub-sequence. The calculation sub-module  415  calculates a second average value of the sampling points of the second maximum value array. The determination sub-module  416  determines whether or not a value of each sampling point of the second maximum value array is greater than or equal to the second average value. If the value of a sampling point of the second maximum value array is greater than or equal to the second average value, the output sub-module  417  outputs a digital “1” to represent the value of the sampling point. If the value of a sampling point of the second maximum value array is less than the second average value, the output sub-module  417  outputs a digital “0” to represent the value of the sampling point. The output of the output sub-module  417  is arranged in a second predetermined array in sequence to form the second discrete audio array of the first audio file. 
     In step S 200 , the cipher code generation module  42  generates a cipher code using the first discrete audio array and the first digital watermark. In this embodiment, the cipher code generation module  42  performs an exclusive or (XOR) logic operation between the first discrete audio array and the first digital water mark to obtain the cipher code. 
     In step S 300 , the watermark generation module  43  generates a second digital watermark using the cipher code and the second discrete audio array. In this embodiment, the watermark generation module  43  performs an XOR logic operation between the second discrete audio array and the cipher code to generate the second digital watermark. 
     In step S 400 , the comparison module  44  compares the first digital watermark with the second digital watermark, to determine whether or not the first digital watermark is the same as the second digital watermark. If the first digital watermark is the same as the second digital watermark, step S 500  is implemented. If the first digital watermark is different from the second digital watermark, step S 600  is implemented. 
     In step S 500 , the first result output module  45  outputs a first result indicating that the second audio has the same ownership with the first audio file, and the procedure ends. 
     In step S 600 , the second result output module  46  outputs a second result indicating that the second audio has a different ownership from the first audio file. In this embodiment, both the first and second results may be texts, voices, images, or other information. 
     Although certain embodiments of the present disclosure have been specifically described, the present disclosure is not to be construed as being limited thereto. Various changes or modifications may be made to the present disclosure without departing from the scope and spirit of the present disclosure.

Technology Category: 3