Media fingerprint

Features

A media fingerprint is a binary string that uniquely identifies a video. The service extracts and compares fingerprint features from the images and audio in videos to find duplicates, trace the source of video clips, and identify original content.

• Uniqueness: Different videos have different media fingerprints.

• Stability: The fingerprint remains unchanged despite transformations such as format conversion, editing, splicing, compression, or rotation of the audio or video file.

Scenarios

• Duplicate video detection

  Build an independent media fingerprint library and rapidly compare sample videos to detect duplicate videos or segments in real time. This prevents excessive identical or similar videos during content delivery and personalized recommendation, helping maintain a positive user experience.

• Original content identification

  Accurately identify whether a video is original, has been edited or transformed, or is a re-creation by we media. This addresses copyright enforcement challenges in the short video industry, provides a technical foundation for video asset trading, and protects the interests of original creators and video platforms.

• Quick moderation

  Maintain a library of non-compliant videos or a custom blacklist and quickly compare new videos against it using DNA matching. Compared with traditional moderation, this approach improves review efficiency for large volumes of videos, ensures accuracy, and reduces costs.

• Ad revenue sharing

  Use media fingerprinting to search an ad revenue-sharing library and monitor or identify specific advertisements. This supports a dynamic ad revenue-sharing ecosystem, lets you control ad delivery timing and frequency, and protects the interests of both ad copyright holders and advertising platforms. It also enables efficient ad identification, replacement, and ad slot auctions.

• Video source tracing

  For newly added videos, perform fast searches in a large-scale media fingerprint library to locate a video's propagation path. This helps with video source tracing, path analysis, and uncovering relationships among media resources.

Preparations

• Complete the steps described in the Notes section of the video AI overview. Then, go to the Media Fingerprint product page and click Request Activation - Use ApsaraVideo VOD Service. Fill in the required information, submit your request, and wait for a notification.

• When you use media fingerprinting for the first time, you must provide your user ID (UID) and region information. Submit a ticket to request free activation of the media fingerprint library. If you do not activate the library, your subsequent use of the media fingerprint feature will be affected.

Billing

Media fingerprinting is billed based on the duration of successfully processed videos. For more information, see Video AI billing.

How to use

• Automatic trigger

  After you activate the media fingerprint service, any video uploaded to ApsaraVideo VOD automatically triggers media fingerprint processing after transcoding is complete. The result is delivered through a message callback. For more information, see Media fingerprint job complete.

• API trigger

  • For videos that are already uploaded to ApsaraVideo VOD, you can call the SubmitAIJob operation to submit a media fingerprint job.

  • After you submit the job, it is processed asynchronously. The result is sent through a message callback. For more information, see Media fingerprint job complete. You can also call the ListAIJob operation to query the job result.

    Note

    • For automatic triggers, you must configure transcoding to output only one MP4 stream, such as a low definition or original quality stream. Media fingerprint processing starts after one stream finishes transcoding.

    • If you use the API method, you do not need to configure transcoding. You can process the source file directly.

• Query results

  • After a media fingerprint job is complete, you can call the GetMediaDNAResult operation to retrieve the DNA result.

  • The media fingerprint result includes the following information:

    The result includes the following details:

    • Whether the job matched any duplicate videos.

    • If a match exists, details of the duplicate video are returned.

    • The timecode intervals where duplication occurs between videos.

    • The degree of duplication between videos, expressed as a number from 0 to 1.

• Existing videos

  To ensure high-quality DNA comparison results, import existing videos to build a complete feature library. Use one of the following methods:

• If the total duration of your existing video content is less than 1 million minutes, directly call the SubmitAIJob operation to process the videos.

• If the total duration of your existing video content exceeds 1 million minutes, submit a ticket for technical support. In the ticket, you must specify the quantity, total duration, and storage location of your existing videos.

SDK examples

For SDK examples related to media fingerprinting, see Media Fingerprint Management.