Personal Video Recorder Scene Segmentation for Commercial Skipping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Personal video recorders (PVRs) lack the ability to accurately distinguish between commercial advertisements and program content, requiring users to repeatedly press navigation buttons to skip through unwanted content, which is inefficient.
Innovation Solution
A PVR system that includes a processing unit, communication interfaces, data storage, and playback logic to analyze recorded content and divide it into scenes based on event data and index data, allowing users to skip commercial advertisements with a single button press without missing program content.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If users press forward navigation button repeatedly to skip through commercial advertisements, then they can reach program content, but the operation time and number of button presses increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments recorded content into distinct scenes using event data and index data, allowing the system to identify boundaries between commercial advertisements and program content. This segmentation enables selective navigation where users can skip entire commercial segments with a single button press rather than repeatedly pressing through individual seconds or minutes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary analysis during recording to create event data and index data that mark scene boundaries and content types. This preliminary action prepares the navigation structure in advance, so during playback the system can immediately identify and skip commercial segments without requiring users to manually navigate through each moment of content.
2Loss of time
If users press forward navigation button to skip through content, then they can reach program content faster, but they may skip over desired program content
Solution Approach 1:
By dividing content into discrete scenes with clear boundaries marked in event data and index data, the system allows users to skip complete commercial segments without risking entry into program content. The scene-based segmentation provides reliable boundaries that prevent accidental skipping of desired content while enabling efficient navigation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces event data and index data as intermediary structures between the raw recorded content and user navigation. These intermediary data structures contain metadata about content types and scene boundaries, allowing the system to make intelligent navigation decisions that distinguish commercials from program content, thereby improving reliability of content identification.
3Ease of operation
If PVR uses time segments to allow users to skip content, then navigation is simple, but it cannot accurately distinguish between commercial advertisements and program content
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses event data and index data as intermediary layers that contain precise information about content types and scene boundaries. These intermediary structures enable the simple forward button press to trigger intelligent navigation decisions based on accurate content identification, combining operational simplicity with precise content discrimination.
Solution Approach 2:
The PVR performs preliminary analysis during recording to create event data and index data that mark content boundaries and types. This preliminary action prepares detailed content information in advance, allowing the simple navigation interface to leverage accurate content identification without requiring complex user input or real-time analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for navigating content in a personal video recorder (“PVR”) is disclosed. The PVR detects events, or dark frames, during recording of television content, and records the locations of the events. The PVR can use the recorded locations of the events by applying commercial grouping rules, contained in a logic that is accessible by a processing unit, to divide the recorded television program into scenes. In applying such commercial grouping rules, a group of back-to-back television commercials comprises a single scene. Such division allows a user to skip over an entire scene (e.g. an entire block of commercials) with the press of a single navigation button.