AUTOMATIC SELECTION OF MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS

• US 20090319568A1
• Filed: 06/24/2008
• Published: 12/24/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Klemets, Anders E., Larkin, Kevin P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,965,903 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/41 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/68 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/70 of video data

Abstract

Technologies for selecting a media representation out of a plurality of representations of the same media offered by a media provider wherein the selected representation is a preferred representation and the selecting is based on metadata of the media representations evaluated against scoring criteria.

Claims

1. A system for selecting a preferred representation of a media from a set of representations of the media, the system comprising:

a scoring engine operable to receive metadata corresponding to each representation of the set of representations and operable to assign a score to each representation of the set of representations resulting in one or more representations with a highest score;

a tie breaker operable to break a tie between representations of the set of representations having equal highest scores wherein score assigning and any tie breaking result in an indication of the preferred representation; and

a media selector operable to select the preferred representation of the media from the set of representations of the media based on the indication.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the score assigned to a representation is based on the metadata corresponding to the representation evaluated against scoring criteria.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the scoring criteria includes an encoding bit rate of the representation being less that a link data throughput rate of a link providing the representation.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the scoring criteria of an encoding bit rate of the representation being less that a link data throughput rate of a link providing the representation is the most important scoring criteria.

5. The system of claim 2 wherein the scoring criteria includes the representation not being transcoded.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the scoring criteria of the representation not being transcoded is the second most important scoring criteria.

7. The system of claim 2 wherein the scoring criteria includes a value for each criterion wherein the sum of values less than a particular value is less than the particular value.

8. The system of claim 2 wherein a representation that satisfies a single higher-level criterion of the scoring criteria receives a score that outranks another representation that satisfies any combination criteria of a lower-level than the high-level criterion.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the media selector is further operable to select a preferred metadata corresponding to the preferred representation.

10. A method for selecting a preferred representation of a media from a set of representations of the media, the method comprising:

receiving metadata corresponding to the set of representations of the media, the metadata providing characteristics of each corresponding representation of the set of representations;

assigning a score to each representation of the set of representations, the score based on evaluating the metadata of the corresponding representation;

breaking any ties between representations that have an equal highest score, the assigning and breaking resulting in an indication of the preferred representation of the media; and

selecting the preferred representation of the media from the set of representations of the media based on the indication.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising selecting a preferred metadata corresponding to the preferred representation of the media.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein the evaluating further comprises evaluating the metadata of the corresponding representation against scoring criteria.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the scoring criteria includes an encoding bit rate of the representation being less that a link data throughput rate of a link providing the representation.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the scoring criteria of an encoding bit rate of the representation being less that a link data throughput rate of a link providing the representation is the most important scoring criteria.

15. The method of claim 12 wherein the scoring criteria includes the representation not being transcoded.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the scoring criteria of the representation not being transcoded is the second most important scoring criteria.

17. The method of claim 12 wherein the scoring criteria includes a value for each criterion wherein the sum of values less than a particular value is less than the particular value.

18. The method of claim 12 wherein a representation that satisfies a single higher-level criterion of the scoring criteria receives a score that outranks another representation that satisfies any combination criteria of a lower-level than the high-level criterion.

19. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for a method of selecting a preferred representation of a media from a set of representations of the media, the method comprising:

receiving metadata corresponding to the set of representations of the media, the metadata providing characteristics of each corresponding representation of the set of representations;

assigning a score to each representation of the set of representations, the score based on evaluating the metadata of the corresponding representation against scoring criteria wherein the scoring criteria includes a value for each criterion wherein the sum of values less than a particular value is less than the particular value;

breaking any ties between representations that have an equal highest score, the assigning and breaking resulting in an indication of the preferred representation of the media;

selecting the preferred representation of the media from the set of representations of the media based on the indication; and

attempting to render the selected preferred representation of the media.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 19 further comprising selecting a preferred metadata corresponding to the preferred representation of the media.