WASHINGTON – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded patent no. 7,533,398 to The Associated Press for a method of “automatic selection of encoding parameters for transmission of media objects,” an underpinning technology fundamental to AP’s SNAPfeed application for field reporting.

Initially developed at the beginning of the second Gulf War, SNAPfeed translates a field reporter’s answers to a few simple questions into a series of complex actions which automatically compress and reliably get video back to a newsroom to meet or beat a deadline. Hiding technical distractions, the combination of editorial information, variable bandwidth, and computer performance determines how best to proceed using highly optimized transmission protocols.

Today, SNAPfeed is used by more than 300 field crews and 70 news organizations, including the AP, and empowers broadcasters to send video to home base from a standard laptop.

"Many of the things we do are unique and increasingly innovative," said Lee Perryman, AP’s director of broadcast technology. "Our forward-thinking investments in research and development are unmatched and key to our continued delivery of valuable solutions for multimedia content producers."

AP is helping television and radio news operations simplify production workflows and reduce costs. The use of SNAPfeed creates more news coverage flexibility at considerable savings over traditional satellite transmissions as well as dynamic integration with ENPS and optional automatic transfer to production and on-air media servers.

SNAPfeed is an add-on to AP’s ENPS system (www.enps.com), a comprehensive information management and production tool used by more than 52,000 reporters, writers, editors and producers in almost 700 television, radio and network newsrooms in 58 countries. Leveraging a scalable, dependable architecture supporting dozens or thousands of users in both simple and complicated multi-site environments, ENPS integrates with products from more than 50 companies.

About The Associated Press
The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the largest and most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.

On the Internet: www.ap.org, www.enps.com