METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ORGANIZING SEGMENTS OF MEDIA ASSETS AND DETERMINING RELEVANCE OF SEGMENTS TO A QUERY

• US 20100161580A1
• Filed: 12/24/2008
• Published: 06/24/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/24/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Comcast Interactive Media LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Comcast Interactive Media LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Inventors: Shevade, Bageshree, Davis, Anthony R., Kronrod, Vladimir, Chipman, Leslie Eugene, Houghton, David F., Zhou, Hongzhong, Farrell, Ryan M., Tzoukermann, Evelyne, Jojic, Oliver, Ambwani, Geetu
• Granted Patent: US 8,713,016 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/438 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/44 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

The invention pertains to methods, systems, and apparatus for identifying media items relevant to a selected subject matter, the method comprising determining the subject matter of a first media item, the first media item comprising at least one of audio content and video content, determining the classification within an ontology of the subject matter of the first media item, analyzing the ontology to identify other subject matter related to the subject matter of the first media item, and performing a search for other media items relevant to the subject matter of the first media item as a function of at least the other related subject matter according to the ontology.

Claims

1. A method of identifying media items relevant to a selected subject matter, each media item comprising at least one of audio content and video content, the method comprising the steps of:

selecting a subject matter;

determining a classification within an ontology of the selected subject matter;

analyzing the ontology to identify at least one related subject matter to the selected subject matter according to the ontology; and

performing a search for media items relevant to the selected subject matter as a function of at least the related subject matter.

2. A method of identifying media items relevant to a first media item as a function of subject matter, the method comprising the steps of:

determining a subject matter of a first media item, the first media item comprising at least one of audio content and video content;

classifying the first media item within an ontology as a function of its subject matter;

analyzing the ontology to identify other, related subject matter to the subject matter of the selected media item; and

performing a search for other media items relevant to the subject matter of the first media item as a function of at least the other, related subject matter according to the ontology.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising the step of:

indexing a plurality of media items comprising at least one of audio content and video content within the ontology as a function of their subject matter.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the step of performing the search further comprises searching for media items, indexed under the related subject matter within the ontology.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the plurality of media items comprises segments of media assets at the sub-asset level, each segment having a cohesive subject matter.

6. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of analyzing the ontology to identify related subject matter comprises identifying a parent subject matter to the subject matter of the selected media item.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of analyzing the ontology to identify related subject matter comprises identifying a sister subject matter of the subject matter of the selected media item.

8. The method of claim 2 wherein the ontology has different portions specifically adapted to different knowledge domains and the first media item comprises a segment of a media asset and the segment is classified within a portion of the ontology corresponding to the knowledge domain of the media asset of which the segment is a part.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the step of determining the subject matter comprises selecting a specific process for determining the subject matter as a function of a knowledge domain of the media asset.

10. The method of claim 8 further comprising the step of:

determining the knowledge domain of the segment.

11. The method of claim 8 wherein the media assets are multimedia assets.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the media assets comprise television programming.

13. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of determining the subject matter of the first media item comprises at least one of analyzing a closed captioning stream within the media item, analyzing audio within the media item for non-speech subject matter information, performing speech recognition on the audio within the media item, performing optical character recognition on the video of the media item, performing video analytics on video of the media item, and analyzing metadata within the media item for subject matter information.

14. The method of claim 2 wherein the first media item is a segment of a media asset, the segment having a cohesive subject.

15. A computer program product for identifying media items relevant to a first media item as a function of their subject matter comprising:

(1) computer executable instructions for determining a subject matter of a first media item, the first media item comprising at least one of audio content and video content;

(2) computer executable instructions for classifying the first media item within the ontology as a function of its subject matter;

(3) computer executable instructions for analyzing the ontology to identify other, related subject matter to the subject matter of the first media item;

(4) computer executable instructions for formulating a search strategy for media items relevant to the subject matter of the first media item, the search strategy being a function of at least the subject matter related to the subject matter of the first media item according to the ontology; and

(5) computer executable instructions for performing a search for media items relevant to the first media item using the search strategy.

16. The computer program product of claim 15 wherein the ontology has different portions specifically adapted to different knowledge domains and the selected media item comprises a segment of a media asset and the segment is classified within a portion of the ontology corresponding to the knowledge domain of the media asset of which the segment is a part.

17. The computer program product of claim 16 wherein the step of determining subject matter comprises selecting a specific process for determining subject matter as a function of a knowledge domain of the media asset.

18. The computer program product of claim 16 further comprising the step of:

determining the knowledge domain of the media asset.

19. The computer program product of claim 15 further comprising the steps of:

indexing a plurality of media items comprising at least one of audio content and video content within an ontology as a function of their subject matter; and

wherein the step of performing the search further comprises searching for media items classified under the related subject matter within the ontology.

20. The computer program product of claim 15 wherein the media items comprise television programming.

21. The computer program product of claim 15 wherein the step of analyzing the ontology to identify related subject matter comprises identifying at least one of a parent subject matter and a sister subject matter to the subject matter of the selected media item.