Content analysis apparatus

• US 20040168205A1
• Filed: 11/12/2003
• Published: 08/26/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pace Micro Technology Ltd. (CommScope Holding Company, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Barbieri, Mauro, Snijder, Freddy, Nesvadba, Jan Alexis Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 7,243,111 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/136
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/783 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/914 Video
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/915 Image
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

The sharp price decrease of storage media enabled users to store more and faster content in contrary to the past. In the near future they will be overwhelmed by the amount of data stored on storage media. Because of the enormous amount of information, they will not be able to index the multimedia content stored manually for later retrieval. Tools to support the users are required. The disadvantage of these algorithms is that they are very expensive in terms of processing power and therefore not feasible for consumer storage devices. The invention proposes an apparatus for content indexing using processing parameters that come available while processing multimedia content. One embodiment of this processing is compression, processing which is performed with almost all multimedia content before it is stored.

Claims

1. Content analysis apparatus (100), comprising:

(a) a video processor (101) capable of receiving multimedia content and generating processed multimedia content;

(b) a system for content analysis (102), connected to the video processor to receive processing parameters from the video processor, said processing parameters being separate from said processed multimedia content;

said processing parameters being generated as a result of processing the multimedia content; and

said system for content analysis being conceived to generate content descriptors representative for the multimedia content, responsively to said processing parameters.

2. Content analysis apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the system for content analysis is conceived to detect scene changes in the multimedia content

3. Content analysis apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the apparatus further comprises means to generate index pointers for the multimedia content.

4. Content analysis apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the apparatus further comprises means to create bookmarks that can be used for navigation through the multimedia content.

5. Content analysis apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the video processor is a video compressor.

6. Content analysis apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the video processor is an encryption device.

10. Storage device for storing multimedia content, comprising the content analysis apparatus according to claim 1.

7. Broadcasting system comprising a video processor capable of receiving multimedia content an generating processed multimedia content, being further conceived to

(a) Process the received multimedia content;

(b) broadcast the processed multimedia content;

(c) accompany the broadcasted multimedia with a stream comprising processing parameters from the video processor, said processing parameters being separate from said processed multimedia content;

said processing parameters being generated as a result of processing the multimedia content.

8. Broadcasting system according to claim 7, wherein the broadcast multimedia content is broadcasted according to the DVB standard.

9. Multimedia device for receiving the multimedia content and processing parameters broadcasted by the broadcasting system according to claim 7, further being to conceived to generate index pointers for the multimedia content, responsively to the processing parameters.