6. The method of claim 1 further comprising: sorting the set of signatures according to a count of the number of times a closely matching signature appears in the set of signatures to find likely matching reference multimedia clip signatures.
1. A method for automatically fingerprinting multimedia content received from a distributed source, and search monitoring for information corresponding to the multimedia content on a portable device, the method comprising: generating on a portable device an N-dimensional query audio descriptor for an audio feature identified in a temporal audio segment of a multimedia clip and an N-dimensional query video descriptor for a video feature identified in a frame of the multimedia clip received on the portable device; generating on the portable device an N-dimensional query audio signature based on an audio quantization of the N-dimensional query audio descriptor and an N-dimensional query video signature based on a video quantization of the N-dimensional query video descriptor; generating on the portable device a traversal hash query audio signature based on a combination of dimensions of the N-dimension query audio descriptor and a traversal hash query video signature based on a combination of dimensions of the N-dimensional query video descriptor; and searching a reference multimedia clip database on the portable device using the traversal hash query audio signature and the traversal hash query video signature to find a set of signatures that are within a specified signature distance to the associated N-dimensional query audio signature and the associated N-dimensional query video signature, wherein the portable device is provided access to data related to multimedia content associated with a likely matching signature selected from the set of signatures.