US Patent 12062026 Identifying and retrieving video metadata with perceptual frame hashing

Shoppable video enables a viewer to identify and buy items appearing in a video. To retrieve information about the items in a frame of the video, the playback device generates a perceptual hash of that frame and uses that hash to query a first database storing perceptual hashes of different version of the video. The database query returns an identifier for the frame, which is then used to query a second database that store the item information. The results of this query are returned to the playback device, which shows them to the user, enabling the viewer to learn more about and possibly purchase the item. Using queries based on perceptual hashes of different versions of the video increases the likelihood of returning a match, despite formatting differences. And using separate hash and metadata databases makes it possible to update the metadata without changing the hashes.