Method and apparatus for automatically converting source video into electronic mail messages

• US 20030088687A1
• Filed: 12/23/2002
• Published: 05/08/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: AT&T Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Markowitz, Robert Edward, Zamchick, Gary Lee, Gibbon, David Crawford, Shahraray, Behzad, Liu, Zhu, Begeja, Lee, Renger, Bernard Simon
• Application Number:
  US10/325,830
• Publication Number:
  US 20030088687A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/231
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23418 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics television picture signal circuitry for scene change detection H04N5/147; filtering for image enhancement G06T5/00; methods or arrangements for recognising scenes G06V20/00; arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25891 being end-user preferences retrieval of video data in a video database based on user preferences G06F16/739; arrangements for recognizing users' preferences H04H60/46; user profiles in network data switching protocols H04L67/306; processing of user preferences or user profiles in wireless networks H04W8/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26603 for automatically generating descriptors from content, e.g. when it is not made available by its provider, using content analysis techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/482 End-user interface for program selection broadcast systems using EPGs H04H60/72
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4828 for searching program descriptors retrieval of video data G06F16/739
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/632 using a connection between clients on a wide area network, e.g. setting up a peer-to-peer communication via Internet for retrieving video segments from the hard-disk of other client devices broadcast-related systems characterised by transmission among terminal devices H04H60/80; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and system for automatically identifying video content within source video and transmitting the video content to an electronic mail client. The transmitted video content can be streaming video, video files, and/or other medium derived from the source video. An enhanced electronic mail client is also disclosed.

Claims

1. A method for arranging for delivery of content from a video source, comprising:

automatically identifying a portion of at least one source video stream with reference to a predetermined user profile;

transforming the identified portion of the at least one source video stream into at least one destination medium; and

automatically building an electronic mail message based on the at least one destination medium and the identified portion of the at least one source video.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically identifying comprises determining a start of the identified portion of the at least one source video stream and an end of the identified portion of the at least one source video stream.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically identifying comprises determining at least one pointer to the identified portion of the corresponding at least one source video stream.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein automatically building comprises embedding the at least one pointer in the electronic mail message.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein transforming comprises sampling the identified portion of the at least one source video stream, and the at least one destination medium comprises at least one image.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein automatically building comprises embedding the at least one image in the body of the electronic mail message.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein transforming comprises extracting information from the identified portion of the at least one source video stream to yield closed caption text.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein transforming further comprises processing the closed caption text for at least one of error correction and language translation.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein transforming further comprises a text-to-speech conversion of the closed caption text into a sound file.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein transforming comprises creating a video file from the identified portion of the at least one source video stream.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein automatically building comprises attaching the video file to the electronic mail message.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically building an electronic mail message comprises inserting metadata related to the identified portion of the at least one source video stream into a header of the electronic mail message.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the metadata includes at least one of source information, subject and broadcast date.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending the electronic mail message.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein sending the electronic mail message is performed according to at least one of a predetermined time and a predetermined time interval.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein sending the electronic mail message is event-triggered.

17. A method for arranging for the delivery of content from a video source, comprising:

automatically identifying a portion of at least one source video stream based on relevance to a predetermined user profile;

transforming the identified portion of the at least one source video stream into at least a thumbnail image and closed caption text; and

automatically building an electronic mail message using the thumbnail image and the closed caption text.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein automatically building the electronic mail message further comprises at least one of attaching the portion of the at least one source video stream and linking to the portion of the at least one source video stream.

19. A system for arranging the delivery of content to an electronic mail client, comprising:

at least one video source;

a user profile database; and

a server coupled to the video source and the user profile database, wherein the server is configured to read profile data from the user profile database, automatically identify a portion of the at least one video source using the profile data, transform the identified portion of the at least one video source into a destination medium, and automatically build an electronic mail message using the destination medium.

20. A computer-readable storage medium configured to provide a graphical user interface for an electronic mail client, the graphical user interface comprising:

a management feature for managing a plurality of electronic mail messages based on metadata, wherein the metadata includes at least one of broadcast source, broadcast date and duration information related to at least one corresponding source video for each of the plurality of electronic mail messages; and

a view feature for viewing a selected portion of the at least one corresponding source video and a medium derived from a selected portion of the at least one corresponding source video.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the medium derived from the selected portion of the at least one corresponding source video comprises a thumbnail image.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the at least one thumbnail image is a representative frame of the selected portion of the at least one corresponding source video.

23. The system of claim 20, wherein the medium derived from the selected portion of the at least one corresponding source video comprises closed caption text.

24. The system of claim 20, wherein the view feature comprises at least one video player.

25. A system configured to deliver content from a video source, comprising:

means for automatically identifying a portion of at least one source video stream based on relevance to a predetermined user profile;

means for transforming the identified portion of the at least one source video stream into a destination medium; and

means for automatically building an electronic mail message based on the destination medium and the identified portion of the at least one source video.

26. The system of claim 25, further comprising means for sending the electronic mail message.

27. The method of claim 25, wherein the means for sending the electronic mail message is configured to execute at one of a predetermined time and a predetermined time interval.

28. The method of claim 25, wherein the means for sending the electronic mail message is configured to execute in response to a predetermined event based on the relevance to the predetermined user profile.

29. A method for creating an electronic mail message for delivery of video information to a user comprising:

selecting video information from at least one source video stream using user profile information;

formatting the selected video information in accordance with the profile information; and

populating fields of an electronic message with formatted video information and destination information in accordance with the user profile information.