262 results about "Multimedia streams" patented technology

The underlying invention generally relates to the field of mobile computing, wireless communication, and interactive multimedia applications in mobile communication networks with high-speed access. Particularly, it refers to a customized multimedia information channel system presenting advertisement information (124a) and, if desired, other multimedia streams on a mobile communication and computing device (100) equipped with a Liquid Crystal Display (102) designed to meet modern business-to-business (B2B) requirements. In this connection, interactive operation is guaranteed by a digital wireless data and control link (108) between said mobile computing device (100) and a product (122) to be advertised. In contrast to conventional solutions, said mobile computing device (100) comprises a User Control Board (101) with an Application Programming Interface (105c) providing an intercommunication between a software routine (105b), said User Control Board (101), the display (102) of said device (100), and an additional hard-disk drive (111) for storing content data (124a) to be rendered on the display (102) of said device (100). Thereby, said User Control Board (101) is capable of communicating with a specific file server (118) over a bi-directional air interface (108) and a Wireless Local Area Network (120) by transmitting user requests (123) and receiving content information (124a), receiving control information (124b) from a remote control device (116), and transmitting status information (124c) to the remote control device (116). Furthermore, said device (100) is capable of receiving identification information (126) about the product (122) from a tag device (114) attached to said product (122).

A packet encapsulation scheme for multiplexing application sessions—Lightweight IP Encapsulation (LIPE)—is described. An LIPE packet comprises at least one multiplexing header (NH) and associated multimedia data packet (MDP). The LIPE packet uses UDP/IP as transport. An MH field further comprises a 16-bit a user identifier (UID) field, an 11 bit length indicator (LNG) field, a 1 bit “more” (M) field and an optional payload type/class of service (PT/CoS) field comprising 8 bits.

A server at the edge of a broadband network distributes multimedia content streams to clients, while ensuring that the first data delivered to each client is key data (milestones) needed for correctly decoding the stream content. This is obtained by buffering the packets in the incoming stream and transmitting the packets from the buffer in an outgoing stream, starting with the most recent milestone placed in the buffer before a request to join the respective incoming stream is received. As the writing to and reading from the buffer are performed at different rates, the incoming and outgoing streams are eventually synchronized, at which point the client may be switched to receive the incoming stream directly.

The present invention relates to a method and related system and related devices for forwarding packets of a plurality of multimedia streams where the packets of the plurality of multimedia streams being forwarded from a multimedia source towards a plurality of multimedia endpoints over a communications network, where the method comprises a step of classifying the packets of the plurality of multimedia streams based on the usage of each of the multimedia streams.

A method and apparatus dynamically control data traffic, such as multimedia streams, needing a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) and normal data traffic, according to a variable communication environment. The method of dynamically controlling traffic in a wireless station includes reading header information of a packet received from an upper layer and determining a type of the packet, setting a priority according to the type of the packet, adjusting a size of a variable buffer by performing appropriate dynamic buffering according to the type of the packet, enqueuing the packet in a fixed buffer if the priority is high and enqueuing the packet in the variable buffer if the priority is low, and transmitting the packet enqueued in the fixed buffer to a destination station prior to the packet enqueued in the variable buffer.

First control information, generated according to a first protocol version, for configuring an audiovisual device to present a multimedia stream, may be generated. A first data structure specifying that the first control information is of the first protocol version may be generated. A plurality of packets, including a multimedia stream, the first control information, and the first data structure, may be generated and transmitted. Second control information, generated according to a second protocol version, for configuring an audiovisual device to present a multimedia stream, may be generated. The first data structure may be modified to include information about the second control information. A second plurality of packets, including the modified first data structure, the first control information, a multimedia stream specified by the first control information, the second control information, and a multimedia stream specified by the second control information, may be generated.

A system measures viewership of multimedia programs such as television programs, pay-per-view sporting events, and video-on-demand movies. Viewership data from a plurality of multimedia programs may be compared to determine ratings for the multimedia programs. Multimedia streams en route to set top boxes may be monitored using packet inspection to identify the multimedia program or programs included in the multimedia streams. An electronic table or array may be stored and updated with viewership statistics of monitored multimedia programs. Some embodiments track the total number of households or televisions that are powered on in a viewing area. Ratings are available substantially in real time by accessing a stored table with viewership information or by frequently polling a plurality of stored values to determine which multimedia program is being viewed by all or substantially all viewers in an area.

Computer implemented method, system and computer usable program code for detecting topic shift boundaries in a multimedia stream. A computer implemented method for detecting topic shift boundaries in a multimedia stream includes receiving a multimedia stream, and performing multimodal analysis on the multimedia stream to locate a plurality of temporal positions within the multimedia stream at which topic changes have an increased likelihood of occurring to provide a sequence of multimedia portions. Characteristics for a sliding window for each multimedia portion in the sequence of multimedia portions are automatically determined, and topic shift boundaries are detected in each multimedia portion by applying a text-based topic shift detector over the media stream's text transcript using a sliding window, wherein the sliding window used with each multimedia portion has the characteristics determined from its respective multimedia portion.

Media streams are provided from a server computer to client computers in a network system. The media streams are monitored and the streams becoming globally unsynchronized is detected. When the streams become unsynchronized, action is taken to resynchronize the streams, such as by altering the presentation timeline of at least one of the media streams.

A method and system for integrated personal content access have been disclosed. The system includes a gateway which provides simulated multimedia streams by extracting digital content from a web site, converting the digital content to a simulated video stream, and sending the simulated video stream to a target display device. Neither the web site nor the target display device need to change to provide this feature. The gateway is further able to provide a shadow download feature, where if a user downloads content, the user also has access to other resolutions or formats of the same content via the gateway for his various devices. When the gateway receives a request to access the content, it obtains identifiers for the user's devices, and determines a format corresponding to each of the devices. The gateway retrieves the content for each device in their respective formats and forwards them to the respective device.

A system and method of network adaptive real-time multimedia streaming, in which a receiving bit rate of a packet that is received from a client is monitored, and the monitoring result is fed back to a streaming server, and a transfer bit rate of a packet that is transmitted by the streaming server are provided. The streaming system includes a streaming path on which packetized data are streamed, a streaming server for transmitting the packetized data at a first bit rate through the streaming path in response to a control signal, and a client for receiving the packetized data at a second bit rate according to the state of the streaming path, comparing the first bit rate with the second bit rate and generating the control signal corresponding to the comparison result. The first bit rate is controlled in response to the control signal. The size of packets and an interval between the packets are controlled by the first bit rate. The state of the network is sensed, and thus the transfer bit rate can be automatically controlled according to the state of the network.

The Electronic Content Asset Publication System operates as an overlay application on the native multi-media communication network to receive individual subscriber requests for a selected electronic content asset and deliver that asset to the requesting subscriber. This system acquires, stores, publishes, distributes, accesses and processes electronic content on demand and delivers this content in the format of the subscriber's communication device over a selected multi-media communications infrastructure. This system provides access to specific subscriber-initiated electronic content assets that are of interest to the subscriber. The electronic content assets comprise individual multi-media streams, multi-media files or streams of multi-media files, initiated and published by individual subscribers rather than the mass media distributed by conventional content sources.

A method for efficiently transmitting several multimedia streams to one or more multimedia receivers is disclosed comprising: defining a minimum acceptable time for rendering a multimedia stream to a user when the user selects a particular stream; defining a packet size for packets containing data for each multimedia stream, the packet size defined based on one or more performance characteristics of mass storage devices on the one or more multimedia receivers; concurrently transmitting the packets for each multimedia stream to the one or more multimedia receivers; continually storing the multimedia streams on the mass storage devices; and playing back the multimedia content from the mass storage devices responsive to a user tuning to a particular multimedia stream when a delay greater than the minimum acceptable time would otherwise result waiting for a next packet containing data for the particular multimedia stream to arrive.

A mechanism to configure power save parameters of a wireless client station. When data frames carrying voice, video, or other multimedia traffic are received at the client station via a wireless link, a frame rate of the received data frames is measured for a period of time. Then a power save parameter of the client station is configured based on the measuring to adjust delivery of the data frames to the client station during a power save state of the client station.

The present invention provides methods, devices, and systems for synchronizing group switching of multimedia streams for conferencing applications. More specifically, the present invention provides mechanisms for grouping, mapping, and switching endpoints for role-based multimedia collaboration.

The invention provides a universal audio/video redirection method for cloud access devices under the VDI environment, which includes the following steps: (1) a communication module, a virtual player and a GStreamer plug-in module are established in a client side; (2) a user carries out video-playing operation after remotely logging in a virtual desktop under the VDI environment on the client side, and a server side transmits control commands and multi-media stream data to the communication module by means of a communication protocol; (3) the communication module forwards the control commands and the multi-media stream data to the virtual player; (4) the virtual player loads the GStreamer plug-in module; (5) after the GStreamer plug-in module is loaded, the received data are forwarded to the GStreamer of the client side, and the GStreamer automatically creates a media-processing module to start playing audio and video. The invention realizes the smooth playing of audio and video when cloud access devices remotely access the virtual desktop under the VDI environment.

Synchronization of related packet data network streams is provided. Synchronization is achieved by inserting synchronization packets into data streams that are to be aligned with one another after transmission of those data streams across a network. More particularly, corresponding synchronization packets are inserted into the corresponding data streams at the same time, to serve as markers for performing synchronization of the data at the receiving end. The corresponding data streams may comprise an audio data stream and a corresponding video data stream.

Apparatus for distributing streaming multimedia to at least one end client over a network includes memory and at least one processor operatively connected to the memory. The processor is operative: (i) to receive the streaming multimedia from at least one multimedia source via at least one of a plurality of channels in the network; (ii) when a channel change request generated by the end client for changing a channel and corresponding multimedia content from the multimedia source is not detected, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at a first data rate; and (iii) when the channel change request has been detected, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at a first rate for a prescribed period of time after receiving the channel change request and, after the prescribed period of time, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at the first data rate, wherein the second data rate is greater than the first data rate. The second data rate is greater than the first data rate.

An apparatus and method for time synchronization of a plurality of multimedia streams are described. In one embodiment, the method includes the concurrent capture of multimedia data via a plurality of multimedia platforms. During the concurrent capture of the multimedia data, each of the multimedia platforms receives a synchronization signal from a synchronization generation unit. In response, each platform processes a received synchronization signal to generate a common reference clock signal among each of the platforms. Once the common clock signal is generated, each of the platforms synchronizes captured multimedia data to form multimedia stream data according to the common reference clock signal. As such, the plurality of multimedia platforms are able to perform collaborative signal processing tasks of multimedia streams, including, for example, array signal processing algorithms.

An apparatus and method are described for mapping a plurality of multimedia streams (e.g., received from a set of satellite transponders) across a lesser plurality of decoders. In one embodiment, arbitration logic allocates the multimedia streams to divide the decoding load equally among the group of decoders (or at least as equally as possible). Allocation may occur statically, when the system is initialized, or dynamically, as the streams are being processed. In addition, in one embodiment, the arbitration logic monitors the amount of multimedia data for each stream stored in a buffer and causes streams to be serviced by the decoders which have relatively more stored multimedia data.

The present invention relates to video conferencing and multimedia messaging, and takes advantage of the capabilities of the communication system to which the audio participants are connected, in order to increase the performance of all the participants in a mixed conference. In a preferred embodiment, the audio participants are provided with a MMS device, and a MMS Engine captures periodically, or at certain events, video conference data attached to MMS messages and addressed to the MMS device. In the opposite direction, the MMS device provides multimedia data to the conventional video conference participants by attaching the multimedia data to MMS messages, which are sent to the IP-addressable MMS Engine. The MMS Engine separates the multimedia data and converts it to a format compatible with the video conference. The converted multimedia data is then provided to video conference participants, and treated like any other multimedia stream included in the video conference.

Consumer networks, increasingly used for multimedia information and commercial content delivery, are destined to be heterogeneous. To provide QoS, it is necessary to adapt the multimedia stream to the heterogeneous network channel conditions and device capabilities. Meanwhile, security is an important component to restrict unauthorized multimedia content access and distribution. This suggests the need for new cryptography system implementations that can operate at different data rates, i.e., be scaled to various multimedia content, different network topology, changing bandwidth, and diverse receiver device capabilities. Content authentication is one important security tool for secure multimedia content communication. Conventional message authentication schemes do not offer suitable scalability for this new set of applications. The present invention addresses design of scalable media data stream authentication and presents a framework for multimedia authentication that supports various kinds of scalability.

An on-demand multimedia stream processing system receives multimedia streams from broadcasters and processes the streams for viewing on a wide range of client devices. To decrease the use of computing resources, processing jobs are started and stopped based on user demand. When a multimedia stream is received from a broadcaster, the processing system does not start processing the multimedia broadcast stream until a request for a processed stream is received. The processing system automatically terminates processing jobs when the audience of a processed stream drops to zero or some other stop condition is met.