WEB-BASED SYSTEM FOR COLLABORATIVE GENERATION OF INTERACTIVE VIDEOS

• US 20090300475A1
• Filed: 02/18/2009
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/03/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Fink, Michael, Junee, Ryan, Barzilai, Aviad, Kerem, Nir, Bar, Sigalit, Ratner, Simon, Ho, Herbert, Elias, Isaac, Frumar, Julian, Schrock, Jasson Arthur, Tavory, Ran
• Granted Patent: US 8,566,353 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/230
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/6018 where the game content is authored by the player, e.g. level editor or by game device at runtime, e.g. level is created from music data on CD
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/632 by branching, e.g. choosing one of several possible story developments at a given point in time
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/69 Involving elements of the real world in the game world, e.g. measurement in live races, real video
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7867 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title and artist information, manually generated time, location and usage information, user ratings
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/048 Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/252 Processing of multiple end-users' preferences to derive collaborative data
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25875 involving end-user authentication restricting access to computer systems by authenticating users using a predetermined code G06F21/33; arrangements for secret or secure communication including means for verifying the identity or authority of a user of the system H04L9/32; networks authentication protocols H04L63/08; authentication in wireless network security H04W12/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2743 Video hosting of uploaded data from client
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/454 Content or additional data filtering, e.g. blocking advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47205 for manipulating displayed content, e.g. interacting with MPEG-4 objects, editing locally
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4781 Games
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8541 involving branching, e.g. to different story endings
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8583 by creating hot-spots
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for adding and displaying interactive annotations for existing online hosted videos. A graphical annotation interface allows the creation of annotations and association of the annotations with a video. Annotations may be of different types and have different functionality, such as altering the appearance and/or behavior of an existing video, e.g. by supplementing it with text, allowing linking to other videos or web pages, or pausing playback of the video. Authentication of a user desiring to perform annotation of a video may be performed in various manners, such as by checking a uniform resource locator (URL) against an existing list, checking a user identifier against an access list, and the like. As a result of authentication, a user is accorded the appropriate annotation abilities, such as full annotation, no annotation, or annotation restricted to a particular temporal or spatial portion of the video.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for annotating a digital video stored in a video repository, the method comprising:

determining whether a user, who did not contribute the video to the video repository, is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video;

responsive to the user being authorized to perform annotation actions, providing to a client a user interface for performing an annotation action on the video;

receiving a request to perform an annotation action on the digital video; and

performing the annotation action and storing a result of the annotation action in association with the digital video.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the user is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video comprises comparing a URL associated with the user to a URL associated with the digital video.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the user is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video comprises determining whether the user is on a list of users authorized to perform annotation for the video.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the user is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video comprises monitoring actions of a contributor of the digital video with respect to the user.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the user is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video comprises monitoring actions of other users with respect to the user.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising determining whether the user is authorized to perform the annotation action for a particular temporal or spatial portion of the video.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the user is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video comprises determining whether an owner of the video has disabled annotation for the video.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the annotation action comprises creating an annotation, the annotation associated with a time range of the video and having a visual appearance.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the annotation action comprises creating a pause annotation for a time within the video, the pause annotation causing playback of the video to halt when the time is reached.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the annotation action comprises creating an annotation with a graphical appearance that when selected within a web browser transfers control to a different web page.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the annotation action comprises creating an annotation associated with a visual object of the video, the annotation having a graphical appearance that when selected displays information associated with the visual object.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to receiving a request for the video from a client;

providing annotations that are associated with the video and that can be displayed by the client.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to receiving a request for the video from a client;

altering the annotations to be displayed in a different locale from a locale in which they were created.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to receiving a request for the video from a viewer;

identifying the annotations associated with the video;

filtering the identified annotations by the identity of a viewer, thereby producing a modified set of annotations;

providing the modified set of annotations to the viewer.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to receiving a request for the video from a viewer;

identifying the annotations associated with the video;

filtering the identified annotations by the identity of a group of which the viewer is a member, thereby producing a modified set of annotations;

providing the modified set of annotations to the viewer.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the request to perform the annotation action incorporates annotation data derived from optical character recognition.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the request to perform the annotation action incorporates annotation data derived from image object recognition.

18. A computer readable storage medium storing a computer program executable by a processor for annotating a digital video stored in a video repository, the actions of the computer program comprising:

determining whether a user, who did not contribute the video to the video repository, is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video;

responsive to the user being authorized to perform annotation actions, providing to a client a user interface for performing an annotation action on the video;

receiving, via the provided user interface, a request to perform an annotation action on the digital video; and

performing the annotation action and storing a result of the annotation action in association with the digital video.

19. A computer system for annotating a digital video stored in a video repository, the actions of the computer program comprising:

an annotation database storing annotation data; and

annotation logic adapted to perform actions comprising;

determine whether a user, who did not contribute the video to the video repository, is authorized to perform annotation actions on the video;

responsive to the user being authorized to perform annotation actions, provide to a client a user interface for performing an annotation action on the video;

receive, via the provided user interface, a request to perform an annotation action on the digital video; and

perform the annotation action and storing a result of the annotation action in the annotation database in association with the video.

20. A computer-implemented method for annotating a digital video stored in a video repository, the method comprising:

receiving a request to annotate the digital video with a pause annotation for a time of the digital video, the pause annotation causing playback of the video to halt when the time is reached;

creating the pause annotation; and

storing the pause annotation action in association with the digital video and with the time of the digital video.