Multimedia Playback Resuming at Statement Boundaries

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing multimedia playback technologies often resume video or audio from an inconvenient midpoint after a pause, disrupting the user's experience due to fixed tape-back times that do not guarantee resumption at the beginning of a sentence or statement.

Innovation Solution

A method and device that analyze audio and subtitle data to determine the starting position of a whole statement before a pause, allowing seamless continuation from this point, ensuring natural dialogue flow and continuous plots by detecting time intervals between audio or subtitle signals.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Ease of operation

If a fixed tape-back time is used to resume video after pause, then the implementation is simple, but the video may resume from the middle of a sentence which disrupts user experience

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveuser experienceVSAvoidplayback control complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Ease of operationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary analysis of audio and subtitle data before the pause occurs, identifying potential statement boundaries in advance. When pause is detected, the system has already prepared information about where complete statements begin, allowing it to quickly determine the optimal resume point without complex real-time analysis.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces subtitle data as an intermediary element to help identify statement boundaries. By analyzing the temporal relationship between audio signals and subtitle displays, the system can more accurately determine where complete statements begin, using subtitles as a mediating reference frame.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Reliability

If audio and subtitle data analysis is performed to determine statement starting position, then the video resumes at the beginning of a sentence improving continuity, but the processing complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvestatement boundary accuracyVSAvoiddata processing complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system segments the audio data into individual audio signals and correlates them with corresponding subtitle segments. By dividing the continuous audio stream into discrete units and analyzing their temporal relationships with subtitles, the system can identify statement boundaries more reliably without needing to analyze the entire audio stream at once.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

Instead of analyzing all audio data from the beginning of the video, the system performs analysis only on a limited time window around the pause point. It examines audio signals and subtitles within a specific duration before the pause, which reduces processing complexity while still achieving reliable statement boundary detection.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #16Partial or excessive action

Data Source

PatentEP2953133B1Method and device of playing multimedia
Publication Date: 2019.08.07 XIAOMI INC
  • EP2953133B1 patent drawingFigure 1~3
  • EP2953133B1 patent drawingFigure 4~6
  • EP2953133B1 patent drawingFigure 7~8

AI summary

The present disclosure relates to a method and a device of playing multimedia. The method comprises: acquiring audio data and/or subtitle data of a first preset time length before a pause position of the multimedia; determining a starting statement position of a whole statement according to the audio data and/or the subtitle data; and continuing to play the multimedia according to the starting statement position when an instruction of continuing to play the multimedia is detected or a condition of continuing to play the multimedia is met.