Audio and/or video generation apparatus and method of generating audio and/or video signals

Abstract

An audio and/or video generation apparatus comprises a recording processor which is operable to record audio and/or video signals on a recording medium, a meta data generation processor which is operable to generate meta data identifying the content of the audio/video signals, and a communications processor which arranged to communicate the meta data separately from the recording medium. Furthermore, the meta data generation processor may be operable to generate at least one sample image which is representative of a video image from the recorded video signals, and to associate the sample image with an address on the recording medium at which the video image is recorded. The video and/or audio generation apparatus provides an advantage in generating and utilising meta data to facilitate the generation of audio/video productions. Accordingly, a system for generating an audio and/or video production comprises an acquisition processor operable in use to receive instructions from a user which instructions are representative of a list of content items for the audio and/or video production. The audio and/or video generation apparatus is arranged in use to receive information representative of the list of content items, and to generate audio and/or video signals in accordance with the content items on the list. An ingestion processor may be provided to receive the list of content items, and the audio and/or video signals and to form the audio and/or video production by associating the audio and/or video signals with the list of content items.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to audio and / or video generation apparatus and methods of generating audio and / or video signals. The present invention also relates to systems for facilitating the generation of audio and / or video productions. [0002] The present invention also relates to acquisition processors for use in generating audio and / or video productions, and audio and / or video generation apparatus. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] The subject matter and content of audio and video productions varies greatly. In addition, to this variety there is, correspondingly, a considerable quantity of such audio and video productions. The quantity has been required to meet the demand from the broadcast and entertainment industries. The audio productions include, for example, radio broadcasts, both live and pre-recorded, musical and audio recordings, whereas video productions include, for example, films, television programs and video recordings. As will be app...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0025] In preferred embodiments, the meta data generation processor may be arranged in operation to generate a preference marker, which is associated with selected ones of the video material items in response to commands from a user. An improvement in the efficiency with which a video production may be edited is provided through a facility for adding a preference marker to the items of video material formed from the takes at acquisition. The preference marker can be used to provide an indication of the items of video material which are preferred from a set of items, which are to be used to form an edited video production. This represents a pre-editing facility, which can be used to reduce a time taken to form the video production. Furthermore, the meta data generation processor may be arranged in operation to record data representative of the prefere

Problems solved by technology

As a result of the great variety and considerable quantity of audio/video productions, the task of locating particular content items of audio/video material within an archive of audio/video productions represents an arduous and labour intensive task, because an operator must visually search the audio/video productions for the desired content item.

Furthermore, because of the length of audio/video productions which are typically although not exclusively stored on linear recording media, the task of navigating through the media to locate particular content items of audio/video material from an audio/video production is time consuming and labour intensive.

The content of audio/video material is typically stored in a form whic

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