Simulated Audience Overlay for Broadcast Content
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users watching content items such as sporting events without a live audience may experience dissatisfaction due to the absence of audience images and sounds, making the content less enjoyable.
Innovation Solution
An augmentation system that adds simulated audience images and sounds to the content item based on metadata, such as the type of event and estimated excitement level, to enhance the user experience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If content items are delivered without live audience presence, then the content can be delivered in situations where live audience is not available (e.g., pandemic restrictions), but the user experience deteriorates due to absence of expected audience images and sounds
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses pre-recorded audience reactions from past events as templates to copy and simulate the expected audience presence. When a live audience is not available, the system retrieves similar audience reaction clips from historical footage and overlays them onto the content, creating a synthetic audience presence that replicates the expected viewing experience without requiring actual live audience members.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary analysis of the content metadata (event type, excitement level, sport, team) before the actual content is viewed, to pre-select appropriate audience reaction templates from a database. This preliminary preparation allows the system to quickly generate appropriate simulated audience responses without requiring real-time recording or complex on-demand generation.
2Reliability
If visual effects and sound effects are added to simulate audience reactions, then the user experience improves by simulating expected audience presence, but the content complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the audience simulation into separate visual and audio components, each handled independently. Visual audience reactions are processed as video overlays while audio reactions are processed as separate sound tracks. This segmentation allows each component to be optimized independently and simplifies the overall processing architecture compared to creating fully integrated synthetic audiences.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary processing layer that acts as a mediator between the original content and the final augmented output. This intermediary layer handles the metadata analysis, template selection, and synthesis operations, separating the complex processing logic from the original content delivery pipeline and allowing for more manageable system architecture.
3Adaptability or versatility
If audience simulation is based on metadata analysis, then the system can adapt to different event types and excitement levels, but the processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary extraction and analysis of metadata (event type, sport, team, excitement level indicators) immediately when content is received, before the actual audience simulation begins. This preliminary metadata processing allows the system to pre-identify the appropriate template category and prepare the corresponding audience reaction clips in advance, reducing processing time during the actual content delivery.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameters of the audience simulation based on metadata analysis, such as adjusting the excitement level, crowd density, and reaction intensity to match the specific event characteristics. By pre-determining these parameters from metadata, the system avoids time-consuming real-time analysis and can quickly apply the appropriate simulation parameters to the selected templates.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems, apparatuses, and methods are described for adding visual and/or sound effects to a content item to improve user experience. Addition of the visual and/or sound effects may be based on metadata associated with the content item.