VIDEO-ENABLED COMMUNITY BUILDING

• US 20110214144A1
• Filed: 05/12/2011
• Published: 09/01/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Virage, Inc. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Girouard, David, Fuller, Charles, Humphrey, Richard, Horowitz, Bradley
• Granted Patent: US 8,495,694 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/38
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

A system and method that provide media content owners the capability to achieve community building goals by exploiting video processing capabilities using rich, interactive and compelling media content on a network or Internet website. The system and method additionally provide website community building mechanisms to community members, thereby allowing the members to customize the actual community websites that many companies and website owners seek in order to enhance e-commerce revenue generation.

Claims

1. A video community system, comprising:

a repository storing video content comprising a plurality of encoded videos and an index of the video content and being accessible by a plurality of user devices; and

a video search and retrieval application configured to search the index of the video content based on a user query and return a search result to at least one of the user devices,

wherein a selected portion of a selected one of the videos is shareable via an offset video pointer communicated to at least one of the user devices, and wherein the selected portion is made shareable according to a user-selected operation.

2. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the user-selected operation is selected from the following operations:

sending the offset video pointer in an e-mail message;

selectively indexing the offset video pointer as a user-identified favorite video;

placing the offset video pointer in a video chat room; and

placing the offset video pointer in a video message board.

3. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the index comprises metadata based on the content of the video.

4. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the offset video pointer includes a start time of the selected portion of the selected video stored on the repository.

5. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the offset video pointer provides access to the selected portion of the selected video stored on the repository.

6. The system as defined in claim 5, wherein the selected portion has start and end times within the selected video.

7. The system as defined in claim 1, further comprising an uploader configured to upload a video stored on a user device to the repository.

8. The system as defined in claim 1, further comprising a module configured to stream a video identified in the search result to a user device.

9. The system as defined in claim 1, further comprising an encoder configured to receive unencoded video and generate encoded videos for storage on the repository.

10. The system as defined in claim 9, further comprising an index generator configured to generate an index for the video content, wherein the generation of the index and the generation of the encoded video content are performed in parallel.

11. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the offset video pointer is a uniform resource locator (URL).

12. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the offset video pointer is a link to a web page.

13. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the user query is received by the video search and retrieval application via a web page.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the offset video pointer provides a link to a video clip, the video clip being a time segment of a selected video, the time segment being defined by at least a start time of the segment within the selected video.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the offset video pointer is a uniform resource locator (URL) comprising at least the start time of the video clip.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the offset video pointer comprises playback offsets referring to a time segment that defines the video clip.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the playback offsets are obtained from the video clip.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the video search and retrieval application is configured to permit selection of a video from the search result.

19. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein extracted metadata is stored in the video index.

20. A video community system, comprising:

a repository storing video content comprising a plurality of encoded videos and an index of the video content and being accessible by a plurality of user devices; and

a video search and retrieval application configured to;

search the index of the video content based on a user query and return a search result to at least one of the user devices; and

share a selected portion of a selected one of the videos via an offset video pointer communicated to at least one of the user devices according to a user-selected operation.

21. A video community system, comprising:

means for storing video content comprising a plurality of encoded videos and an index of the video content and being accessible by a plurality of user devices;

means for searching the index of the video content based on a user query and return a search result to at least one of the user devices; and

means for processing, by at least one computing device, a selected portion of a selected one of the videos according to a user-selected operation so as to be shareable via an offset video pointer with at least one other user.

22. A method of sharing video in a video community, comprising:

storing video content comprising a plurality of encoded videos and an index of the video content and being accessible by a plurality of user devices;

searching the index of the video content based on a user query and returning a search result to at least one of the user devices; and

communicating, by at least one computing device, a selected portion of a selected one of the videos according to a user-selected operation so as to be shareable via an offset video pointer communicated to at least one other user device.

23. A video community system, comprising:

a repository storing video content comprising a plurality of encoded videos and an index of the video content and being accessible by a plurality of user devices;

a video search and retrieval application configured to search the index of the video content and return a search result to at least one of the user devices; and

an application configured to select, as a user-identified favorite, a selected one of the videos.

24. The system as defined in claim 23, wherein the application is configured to select, as a user-identified favorite, a selected portion of the selected video via an offset video pointer according to a user-selected operation.

25. The system as defined in claim 24, wherein the selected portion is indexed as a favorite in association with a particular user account.

26. The system as defined in claim 23, wherein the application maintains a list of user-identified favorite videos.

27. The system as defined in claim 26, wherein the application is further configured to access the list of user-identified favorite videos according to one or more of the following user-selected operations:

select one from the list of user-identified favorite videos for playback;

change the order of user-identified favorite videos in the list;

remove one from the list of user-identified favorite videos; and

share one from the list of user-identified favorite videos via the offset video pointer with another user by sending as an email message, sending as a chat message, posting a message in a board, or posting in a chat room.

28. The system as defined in claim 23, wherein the user-identified favorite is selected from the search result.

29. A video community system, comprising:

a web-accessible video sharing community configured to offer a plurality of user-selectable operations selected from;

email, favorites, video upload, and message board;

a repository comprising a plurality of videos; and

a search and retrieval application configured to access the repository and provide a search result according to a query communicated via a web interface on a user device.