METHODS FOR AUTHORING AND INTERACTING WITH MULTIMEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF DOCUMENTS

• US 20080235585A1
• Filed: 03/21/2007
• Published: 09/25/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Berkner, Kathrin, Hart, Peter E., Hull, Jonathan J., Erol, Berna
• Granted Patent: US 8,812,969 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/717
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/44 Browsing; Visualisation therefor

Abstract

A method, apparatus and article of manufacture for assisting a user with authoring a multimedia representation of documents. In one embodiment, the method comprises displaying one or more visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements from an input document in graphical user interface; and selecting one or more elements and for inclusion in a multimedia representation.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

displaying at least one visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements from an input document in graphical user interface; and

selecting one or more elements and for inclusion in or deletion from a multimedia representation.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying the graphical user interface comprises:

displaying the selected document elements in a context of a page of the input document; and

further comprising receiving user input from one or more user interface elements in the graphical user interface, the user input specifying at least one change in selection of the document elements for inclusion in the multimedia representation.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying the document elements in the graphical user interface comprises:

displaying the document elements in a dialog box; and

displaying one or more user interface elements by which a user can specify a change in selection of the document elements for inclusion in the multimedia representation.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving user input through the graphical user from a user to specify one or more operations that include at least one of the following;

adding a new document element, removing an existing document element, defining a break point, grouping two or more of the document elements, and specifying a navigation path.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving user input through the user graphical interface to specify a presentation action associated with each of the document elements.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the presentation action includes at least one of the following:

zooming, panning over, synthesizing to speech, and synchronizing with other document elements.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein displaying a user graphical interface further comprises:

receiving user input through the graphical user interface to specify a sequence number for each document element to indicate a presentation sequence.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

highlighting the document elements with different visual indicia to indicate a selection status of the document elements.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving user input through the graphical user interface to specify one or more parameters that constrain a visual setting or an audio setting of the multimedia representation.

10. The method of claim 11 wherein the parameters include at least one of the following:

presentation duration, display resolution, synthesized voice, gender of synthesized voice, background music, target device profiling and text-to-speech engine.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

storing a user profile that includes a viewing preference of a user; and

utilizing the user profile in creating the multimedia presentation for the user.

12. A method comprising:

selecting at least one visual, audible, or audiovisual document element from an input document for inclusion into a multimedia representation; and

displaying an interactive user interface to playback a combination of the multimedia representation and the input document under user control.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

linking at least one of the document elements to a region on a page of the input document; and

under the user control, switching between presentation of the multimedia representation and the input document by utilizing the linking.

14. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

providing a manual navigation control for a user to view the input document.

15. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

providing an automatic navigation control for a user to view the multimedia representation.

16. The method of claim 12 wherein providing an interactive user interface further comprises:

embedding a play indicator in at least a page of the input document; and

activating the play indicator to play back the multimedia representation from a corresponding document element linked to the page.

17. The method of claim 12 wherein providing an interactive user interface further comprises:

playing back the multimedia representation of a portion of a document page when the portion of the document page is selected in a document viewing interface; and

automatically resizing the selected portion of the page in the multimedia representation.

18. The method defined in claim 12 further comprising adding a voice annotation to the multimedia representation.

19. The method defined in claim 12 further comprising adding a tag to the multimedia representation.

20. The method defined in claim 12 wherein displaying the multimedia representation in response to a user activating a user control on a document viewer interface for viewing the input document.

21. An apparatus comprising:

a multimedia thumbnail generator to compose a multimedia representation from one or more visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements automatically selected from an input document based on one or more constraints; and

a graphical user interface, coupled to the multimedia thumbnail generator, to present the automatically selected document elements and to receive a user input to edit the multimedia representation.

22. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the graphical user interface includes:

a document page display view to display the document elements of the multimedia representation in a context of a page of the input document and to receive the user input.

23. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the graphical user interface includes:

one or more dialog boxes to display the document elements of the multimedia representation and to receive the user input.

24. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the graphical user interface uses different visual indicia to indicate a different selection status of each document element.

25. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the graphical user interface provides a menu of presentation actions associated with each document element for a user to select one of the presentation actions for the associated document element.

26. The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the graphical user interface provides a printing interface for a user to specify one or more parameters that constrain printing of the multimedia representation to a target.

27. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the printing interface includes one or more of the following:

a content selection section, an audio setting section, and an imported content section.

28. An apparatus comprising:

a multimedia thumbnail generator to compose a multimedia representation from one or more visual, audible, or audiovisual document elements selected from an input document based on one or more constraints and a user input; and

a graphical user interface, coupled to the multimedia thumbnail generator, to present the multimedia representation and to switch between the presentation of the multimedia representation and presentation of the input document under user control.

29. The apparatus of claim 28 further comprising:

a document viewing interface for a user to view the input document using manual control.

30. The apparatus of claim 28 further comprising:

an automatic viewing interface to automatically resize and navigate the multimedia representation.

31. The apparatus of claim 28 further comprising:

a stop indicator associated with at least one of the document elements to allow a user to stop the presentation of the multimedia representation and to switch to the presentation of the input document.

32. The apparatus of claim 28 further comprising:

at least one of the following indicators;

play indicator, pause indicator, fast forward indicator, fast backward indicator, skipping indicator embedded in at least a page of the input document to allow a user to control the multimedia representation from a corresponding document element linked to the page.

33. An article of manufacture having one or more recordable media with instructions thereon which, when executed by a system, cause the system to perform a method comprising:

automatically selecting at least one visual, audible, or audiovisual document element from an input document for inclusion into a multimedia representation based on one or more constraints; and

providing a graphical user interface to view the automatically selected documents and to edit the multimedia representation.

34. The article of manufacture of claim 33 wherein providing a user interface further comprises:

providing the graphical user interface for a user to specify one or more parameters that constrain a visual setting or an audio setting of the multimedia representation.

35. An article of manufacture having one or more recordable media with instructions thereon which, when executed by a system, cause the system to perform a method comprising:

selecting at least one visual, audible, or audiovisual document element from an input document for inclusion into a multimedia representation based on one or more constraints; and

providing an interactive user interface to playback a combination of the multimedia representation and the input document under user control.

36. The article of manufacture of claim 35 wherein providing an interactive user interface further comprises:

embedding a play indicator in at least a page of the input document; and

activating the play indicator to play back the multimedia representation from a corresponding document element linked to the page.

37. The article of manufacture of claim 35 wherein providing an interactive user interface further comprises:

playing back the multimedia representation of a portion of a document page when the portion of the document page is selected in a document viewing interface; and

automatically resizing the selected portion of the page in the multimedia representation.