System and method for recording and reproducing multimedia

Abstract

A system and method summarizes multimedia stored in a compressed multimedia file partitioned into a sequence of segments, where the content of the multimedia is, for example, video signals, audio signals, text, and binary data. An associated metadata file includes index information and an importance level for each segment. The importance information is continuous over as closed interval. An importance level threshold is selected in the closed interval, and only segments of the multimedia having a particular importance level greater than the importance level threshold are reproduced.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates generally to processing multimedia, and more particularly to recording video signals, audio signals, text, and binary data on storage media, and for reproducing selected portions of the multimedia. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] In order to quickly review and analyze a video, for example a movie, a recorded sporting event or a news broadcast, a summary of the video can be generated. A number of techniques are known for summarizing uncompressed and compressed videos. [0003] The conventional practice is to first segment the video into scenes or ‘shots’, and then to extract low and high level features. The low level features are usually based on syntactic characteristics such as color, motion, and audio components, while the high level features capture semantic information. [0004] The features are then classified, and the shots can be further segmented according to the classified features. The segments can be converted to short i...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes a system and method for extracting important parts of a compressed multimedia file. The system uses a metadata file that includes information about each segment in the file. The importance level of each segment is continuous and can be set by the viewer. When the file is read, only segments with a higher importance level than a certain threshold are played. This allows for efficient use of storage space and easy selection of important parts of the file.

Problems solved by technology

Obviously, the problem with such summaries is that the playback can only be based on the features and classifications used to generate the summary.

There are a number of problems with prior art video recording, summarization and playback.

In particular, the hierarchical description proposed in the MPEG-7 standard is very cumbersome if a fine quantization of the importance is used because the number of levels in the hierarchy becomes very large, which in turn requires management of too many levels.

That can get cumbersome quickly as the number of editing operations increases.

That is, the importance levels for sports videos depend on the particular sports genre, and are totally inapplicable to movies and news programs.

Further, the viewer has no control over the length of the summary to be generated.

The small number of subjective levels used by the prior art techniques make it practically impossible for the viewer to edit and combine several different videos based on the summaries to generate a derivate video that reflects the interests of the viewer.

Images