System and method for transcoding digital content

• US 20030065645A1
• Filed: 08/29/2002
• Published: 04/03/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Itoh, Takashi, Takagi, Hironobu
• Granted Patent: US 7,401,079 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99937 Sorting
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A system and method for transcoding digital content (e.g. web content) by correctly employing one annotation for multiple digital contents. This can efficiently reduce the workloads required for the addition of annotation data during the transcoding process. A transcoding system comprises an annotation database system for storing annotation data to be used for the transcoding of contents, and a transcoder for transcoding the contents based on annotation data stored in the annotation database system. Upon receiving an inquiry from the transcoder, a correlation between elements in the contents and descriptions of the annotation data is checked to select one annotation that can be employed for transcoding the content. The correlation is specifically determined based on XPath information.

Claims

1. A system for transcoding digital content, the system comprising:

a database system for storing annotations to be used in a transcoding process; and

a transcoder for transcoding the digital content based on an annotation stored in the database;

wherein, the database system selects the annotation based on correlation between elements in the digital content and descriptions of the annotations.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein said descriptions of the annotations include descriptions for specifying certain portions of digital contents.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein said descriptions for specifying certain portions of the digital contents is XPath.

4. The system according to claim 1, wherein, if multiple annotations that can be applied to the digital content are found, the database system selects the annotation that includes the descriptions of as many elements in the digital contents as possible.

5. A method for transcoding digital content, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining the digital content;

reading annotations to be used in a transcoding step from a database;

determining an annotation corresponding to the digital content based on correlation between elements in the digital content and descriptions of the annotations; and

transcoding the digital content based on the annotation determined at the determining step.

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein said descriptions of the annotations include descriptions for specifying certain portions of digital contents.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein said descriptions for specifying certain portions of the digital contents is XPath.

8. A program product executable on a computer for performing a method of transcoding digital content, the method comprising the steps of:

reading annotations to be used in a transcoding step from a database;

determining an annotation corresponding to the digital content based on correlation between a layout of the digital content and descriptions of the annotations; and

transcoding the digital content based on the annotation determined at the determining step.

9. A computer-readable recording medium storing annotation data to be used in a transcoding process of digital content, wherein

said annotation data is stored in annotation files that are prepared for units of digital contents, the annotation data including descriptions for the transcoding process, the descriptions being correlated with a layout of elements in the digital contents;

and

wherein said annotation files are sorted based on location information of the digital contents on a network.

10. The computer-readable recording medium according to claim 9, wherein the descriptions in the annotation data are correlated with the layout of the elements in the digital contents by using XPath.

11. The computer-readable recording medium according to claim 9, wherein said annotation files are sorted based on URLs (Uniform Resource Locators).

12. The computer-readable recording medium according to claim 9, wherein the annotation data include information for identifying an element in the digital content for which a layout change is planned.

13. A program product executable on a computer for performing a method of managing annotation data to be used for transcoding digital content, the method comprising the steps of:

evaluating a correlation between elements in the digital content and a description in the annotation data; and

presenting a interface to show a state of the correlation between the digital content and the annotation data, based on evaluation results obtained by the evaluating step.

14. The program product according to claim 13, wherein said interface provides, for each element of the digital content, a list for displaying whether the description of a corresponding annotation data is present.

15. The program product according to claim 13, wherein said interface provides a display component on which a detailed correlation between the description of the annotation data and the elements in the digital content is displayed.

16. The program product according to claim 13, wherein said interface provides a display component for accepting an entry from a user and interactively displaying a state of the annotation data corresponding to the digital content based on the entry.

17. The program product according to claim 13, wherein said interface provides a display component for editing the annotation data.