The Associated Press has been awarded a patent for enhancement of the organization’s SNAPfeed application used in field reporting. The application was developed at the start of the second Gulf War and is used to translate a field reporter’s response to a series of questions into a series of "complex actions" that automatically compresses and delivers the reporter’s video content back to a newsroom. It was created to optimize transmission parameters without directly involving a field reporter in the decision making process concerning bandwidth, computer performance and other compression and transmission variables.

The new patent is based on methodology involving "automatic selection of encoding parameters for transmission of media objects."

"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."

SNAPfeed is used by more than 300 field crews and 70 news organizations and allows correspondents to send video from a standard laptop computer. The application is an add-on to the AP’s ENPS news management software for news broadcasts.