A method of comparing two multimedia documents includes a three-step registration
process. Each document is analyzed to extract concrete or abstract single medium
or multimedia elements (meta-segments) from the document. The meta-segments are
categorized to identify categories of information in the document. Then, a meta-identifier
is produced for the document from the information that identifies the contents
of the meta-segments. After registration, traces of the multimedia documents can
be compared, without requiring the entire contents of the multimedia documents
to be compared.