Content Trick Play With Audio Progress Cues for Accessibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Visually-impaired users face difficulty determining when to end trick play operations in digital video systems due to the lack of clear audio cues during fast-forward or reverse play, making it challenging to know when to stop trick play.
Innovation Solution
Implementing audio assistance features that provide customizable audio cues during trick play, indicating the progress of content and allowing users to know when to stop or skip scenes, such as violent or commercial content, with optional automatic scene skipping.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If audio output is disabled during trick play, then video playback speed can be increased for faster navigation, but visually-impaired users cannot determine when to stop trick play operations
Solution Approach 1:
An audio cue system is introduced as an intermediary element during trick play operations. The system generates synthetic audio cues (beeps, tones, or verbal announcements) that serve as a mediator between the video playback system and visually-impaired users, providing temporal information about content progression without interfering with the high-speed video navigation capability
Solution Approach 2:
The audio output parameter is dynamically changed during trick play operations. Instead of completely disabling audio, the system transitions from original content audio to generated audio cues at specific moments (e.g., at scene transitions or at predetermined time intervals), allowing users to track progress while maintaining the ability to navigate at accelerated speeds
2Ease of operation
If audio cues are provided during trick play, then visually-impaired users can determine when to stop trick play, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The audio cue generation system is designed to serve multiple functions: it provides progress information to visually-impaired users, marks scene transitions, indicates commercial boundaries, and can signal content warnings. By consolidating these functions into a single audio output mechanism, the system achieves ease of operation without proportionally increasing complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically detects and generates audio cues based on metadata embedded in the video content or predefined rules, without requiring manual configuration or user intervention. The audio cue timing and content are determined autonomously by the playback system, reducing operational complexity while improving user control
Data Source
AI summary
A user may have preferences regarding types of content that the user likes, or does not like, to see. The user may enter a trick play command to skip a current segment of a content item that the user is viewing, and the user's preferences may be used to cause output of a subsequent segment of the content item.