Overlay Grouping for Omnidirectional Content Rendering
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of consuming immersive multimedia, such as omnidirectional content, is increased due to higher degrees of freedom, leading to uncertainty in user interactions with overlays, particularly when layers of content are rendered, which can distort the content creator's intent and result in a non-optimal user experience.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus that receive metadata defining a group of semantically correlated overlays for background media content, allowing selection and concurrent presentation with the media, including information on bandwidth, resolution, and sequence, and adjust rendering based on user interactions, ensuring allowed interactions are enabled.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple overlays are rendered concurrently with omnidirectional content, then user interaction options increase, but content distortion and loss of creator intent occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments overlays into semantically correlated groups where each group contains alternative overlays representing different levels of detail or different content choices. The system selects and renders only one overlay from each group concurrently with the omnidirectional content, preventing multiple conflicting overlays from being displayed simultaneously. This segmentation resolves the contradiction by maintaining creator intent fidelity while still providing users with controlled interaction options through the alternative overlays within each group.
2Manufacturing precision
If high-resolution overlays are provided for omnidirectional content, then overlay quality improves, but network bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by providing metadata that describes alternative overlays with different quality parameters (resolution, bitrate, etc.) for each semantically correlated group. The client device can select overlays based on current network conditions and device capabilities, choosing lower resolution alternatives when bandwidth is constrained and higher resolution alternatives when bandwidth is abundant. This resolves the contradiction by making overlay quality adaptive rather than fixed, allowing the system to optimize between quality and bandwidth consumption dynamically.
3Adaptability or versatility
If all alternative overlays are downloaded and processed, then overlay selection flexibility increases, but processing resources and time are consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by providing complete metadata descriptions of all alternative overlays in advance, including their semantic correlations, quality parameters, and other relevant information. The client device can evaluate this metadata and make intelligent selection decisions before downloading overlay content, choosing only the necessary alternatives based on current needs. This resolves the contradiction by shifting the processing burden to the metadata evaluation stage rather than requiring full download and processing of all alternatives, thus maintaining selection flexibility while improving processing efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, apparatus and computer program product describing groups of overlays, such as semantically correlated overlays, to background media content. In the context of a method, a group of overlays to background media content is defined by metadata (60). The overlays include semantically correlated overlays having alternative overlays representing content with different levels of detail or overlays providing different choices of content. The method also includes receiving client selection of a respective overlay from a group of overlays (62). In response to the client selection, the method causes the respective overlay to be provided. The respective overlay is received (64) for presentation concurrent with background media content (68).