CLASSIFYING A SET OF CONTENT ITEMS

• US 20100217755A1
• Filed: 09/30/2008
• Published: 08/26/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/04/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Vignoli, Fabio
• Application Number:
  US12/680,593
• Publication Number:
  US 20100217755A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/639 using playlists
• 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 16/683 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/686 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title or artist information, time, location or usage information, user ratings

Abstract

A method of classifying a set of content items, each content item including at least one signal (11) for rendering in perceptible form on a presentation system (1,2) of content items, includes obtaining an at least one-dimensional feature vector for each content item comprised in the set, at least one co-ordinate of the feature vector comprising a parameter value characterizing the content item. The method also includes providing at least one query to a system (14-17) configured to collect information descriptive of content items, each query including at least one of data identifying a content item of the set and data identifying an attribute common to the content items in the set, using results of each provided query to determine a sub-set of the set of content items, and classifying at least one content item in the set according to a measure of similarity between its feature vector and feature vectors obtained for content items in the sub-set.

Claims

1. Method of classifying a set of content items, each content item including at least one signal (11) for rendering in perceptible form on a presentation system (1,2) of content items, which method includes:

obtaining an at least one-dimensional feature vector for each content item comprised in the set, at least one co-ordinate of the feature vector comprising a parameter value characterizing the content item,

providing at least one query to a system (14-17) configured to collect information descriptive of content items, each query including at least one of data identifying a content item of the set and data identifying an attribute common to the content items in the set,

using results of each provided query to determine a sub-set of the set of content items, and

classifying at least one content item in the set according to a measure of similarity between its feature vector and feature vectors obtained for content items in the sub-set.

2. Method according to claim 1, including determining the sub-set of content items based on one of:

counts of how many messages identifying certain content items have been received over a certain time period by the system (14-17) configured to collect information, and

counts of how many times information identifying certain content items appears in data provided to a data repository (15,16).

3. Method according to claim 2, wherein the data repository includes a network of servers (15,16) arranged to provide access to files including text data.

4. Method according to claim 2, wherein the system configured to collect information (15-17) includes at least one search engine for returning links to files including text data corresponding to text data included in a query submitted to the system (15-17) configured to collect information.

5. Method according to claim 1, wherein the method is carried out in one of a plurality of systems (1,2) configured to carry out the method and to communicate with the system (14-17) configured to collect information over a link through a telecommunications network (3).

6. Method according to claim 1, wherein the query to the system (14-17) configured to collect information includes data representative of an attribute common to the content items in the set, and wherein the query is submitted to a system configured to collect information identifying content items in association with data identifying attributes of content items.

7. Method according to claim 6, including obtaining data representative of the attribute from metadata (12) stored with links to the content items in the set.

8. Method according to claim 1, including clustering a set of feature vectors, which set includes at least one of:

a set of feature vectors obtained for content items in the sub-set and

a set of feature vectors obtained for content items to be classified,

wherein determining the measure of similarity to a feature vector includes determining a distance in feature space to a cluster including the feature vector.

9. Method according to claim 1, including storing a set of metadata (13) in association with each of the content items and the attribute common to the set of content items, which metadata includes a value of an attribute for indicating whether the feature vector of the content item has been classified as similar to the feature vectors obtained for content items in the sub-set.

11. System according to claim 10, configured to carry out a method according to claim 1.

13. Computer program including a set of instructions capable, when incorporated in a machine-readable medium (5), of causing a system (1,2) having information processing capabilities to perform a method according to claim 1.

10. System for classifying a set of content items, each content item including at least one signal (11) for rendering in perceptible form on a presentation system (1,2) of content items, which system is configured:

to obtain an at least one-dimensional feature vector for each content item comprised in the set, at least one co-ordinate of the feature vector comprising a parameter value characterizing the content item,

to provide at least one query to a system (14-17) configured to collect information descriptive of content items, each query including at least one of data identifying a content item of the set and data identifying an attribute common to the content items in the set,

to use results of each provided query to determine a sub-set of the set of content items, and

to classify at least one content item in the set according to a measure of similarity between its feature vector and feature vectors obtained for content items in the sub-set.

12. Media player comprising a device (5) for storing content items, a system (6-8) for rendering signals included in the content items in perceptible form and, a network interface (9) for communication with an external system (14-17) configured to collect information descriptive of content items, further comprising a system according to claim 10.