Media Content Skipping Index Normalization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing media content delivery systems lack the ability to efficiently generate and apply skip rules for portions of media content based on user input, leading to inconsistent skipping of commercials, opening credits, and ending credits across different episodes of a title, due to variations in recording start times and content lengths.
Innovation Solution
A media content delivery system that identifies user input to skip portions of media content, generates skip rules by storing and normalizing start and end indexes for each episode, and applies these rules during playback to omit specified portions, ensuring consistent skipping across related media content items.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the system skips portions of media content based on user input for each individual episode, then the user's immediate skipping preference is satisfied, but the skipping behavior is inconsistent across different episodes of the same title due to variations in recording start times and content lengths
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary normalization of start and end indexes when generating skip rules, adjusting them to account for variations in recording start times and content lengths across episodes. This preliminary adjustment ensures that skip rules generated once can be reliably applied consistently across multiple episodes without requiring re-adjustment for each individual playback
Solution Approach 2:
The system generates skip rules based on user input from one episode and copies these normalized skip rules to apply across other episodes of the same title. By copying the normalized index values rather than raw values, the system maintains skipping consistency across episodes while adapting to their individual temporal characteristics
2Device complexity
If the system applies skip rules without normalizing indexes, then the implementation is simpler, but the skipping accuracy deteriorates due to variations in recording start times and content lengths across episodes
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter values of start and end indexes by normalizing them against reference values from a master episode or expected timing. This parameter transformation adjusts the raw index values to compensate for variations in recording start times and content lengths, thereby maintaining high skipping accuracy across different episodes without requiring complex re-processing during playback
3Productivity
If the system generates skip rules for each episode individually without normalization, then the generation process is faster, but the skipping behavior becomes inconsistent across episodes
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates universal skip rules that function across multiple episodes of the same title by normalizing indexes to a common reference frame. This universal approach allows a single set of skip rules to be applied to all episodes, maintaining consistency while avoiding the need to generate separate unnormalized rules for each episode individually
Data Source
AI summary
A first index to a media content item and a second index to the media content item are stored on a media device. Each first index specifies a location in the media content item at which user input was received to skip a portion of the media content item. Each second index specifies a location in the media content item at which user input was received to resume playback of the media content item. A skip start index for the media content item is identified based on the first indexes. A skip end index for the media content item is identified based on the second indexes. A request for playback of an instance of the media content item is received. The instance of the media content item can be played skipping a portion of the instance of the media content item between the skip start and skip end indexes.