Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple an very odd patent that relates to Audience Reactive Media. In short, user's watching a film on their Apple TV box, Vision Pro or other device will have their film they're watching slow down if not pause while the user is laughing to ensure that no verbiage is missed in the film whilst laughing.  The inventor of this patent is world known in the field of audio. We reveal his name at the end of this report.

In Apple's patent background they not that in live theater, actors pause for audience laughter to pass. In cinema, such pauses have to be built in by the filmmaker. Doing so typically requires trial public screenings with test audiences, in order to determine the best timing for holding for laughter (during the film editing phase). In this manner the majority of audiences are covered, in an average way, for comedic effect.

Moreover, directors have observed that comedies are funnier in a live room than in a dead room (or one that is less lively, or more dead, than the live room.) That is because the laughter reaction by a member of the audience, which produces a particular sound power, will cause a higher sound pressure level in a live room than in a dead room.

Over the years, acoustic materials became available such that cinemas could be tuned to have the right amount of reverberation, as speech intelligibility suffers in the presence of too much reverberation while lowering the reverberation time may result in comedies not being perceived as funny. As film sound tracks became more complex with multichannel audio and competition for dialogue intelligibility from music and sound effects, cinemas trended toward reduced reverberation, in order to promote speech intelligibility and localization of sound events.

Surround sound accompanied this development so that if a reverberant listening environment was desired for a scene in a film, recorded reverberation could be added to the multi-channel sound track and in particular to the surround channels.

Audience Reactive Media

One aspect of Apple's granted patent is an audio system that automatically reacts to its audience's vocal reaction, such as laughter. The audience is one or more users of the system of a pre-recorded media being played back by the system. The system reacts by lengthening or extending the scene that is being played back (at the time of the audience reaction) in both picture and sound, so that a movie performs like a live theater actor who pauses during audience laughter.

Machine learning techniques may be used to configure a processor to detect the audience's vocal reaction, such as laughter, and in response extend the scene, and then resume playback of the movie when the users' laughter gradually subsides. In this manner, each instance of the movie's playback is tuned to the real-time reaction of its particular audience, resulting in a more compelling and unique movie watching experience. This also bridges the gap between live acting in a theater and screen acting for film or cinema, by enabling the movie to be more interactive with its individual audience (closer to what is possible in live theater.)

Another aspect of the granted patent is an audio system that dynamically (electronically and automatically upon detecting a vocal reaction) adds reverberation content to its audio output, only during the vocal reaction, e.g., laughter. The system may be configured to continually monitor input data, including ambient sound pickup (e.g., through one or more microphones), and if available video output from a camera and bone conduction pickup by a head mounted device, in order to detect the vocal reaction.

The system may have a machine learning tool that configures a processor to monitor such input data to extract vocal reaction (e.g., laughter) from the monitored ambient sound pickup, and generates reverberation content based on that extracted vocal reaction. The system then immediately adds the reverberation content into its audio output, for example in addition to reproducing the extracted vocal reaction. In this manner, the one or more users of the system will experience a better feeling of being in a live room (during the vocal reaction.)

While this may be considered an odd patent, the inventor of this invention is anything but. Tomlinson M. "Tom" Holman is an American film theorist, audio engineer, and inventor of film technologies, such as the Lucasfilm THX sound system. He developed the world's first 10.2 sound system. Holman presently serves as a distinguished engineer at Apple Inc.