ENHANCED MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PREVIEW RENDERING IN A CLOUD CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

• US 20130111326A1
• Filed: 11/15/2011
• Published: 05/02/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/26/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Box Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Jeffrey H. Seibert Jr
• Inventors: Lockhart, Kimber, Seibert, Jeffrey H. Jr., Goldberg, Arnold, Savage, Brandon, Levie, Aaron, Ghods, Sam, Jourda, Florian, Lee, David T., Mand, Arshdeep, Silva, Nicholas
• Granted Patent: US 11,210,610 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1794 Details of file format conversion
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7837 using objects detected or recognised in the video content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/106 Display of layout of documents; Previewing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/151 Transformation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing improved content previews of files stored in an online content management system with collaboration environment are disclosed. An optimized PDF rendering engine is used to reproduce the appearance of previewed PDF documents. The present disclosure includes a method of evaluating the available system tools for converting files from an existing format to a target format to determine the optimum tool(s) to use for the conversion process of a file.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving by a server a request from a user for a preview of a file in a folder in an web-based collaboration platform, wherein the file has an input file format;

selecting by the server a preferred sequence of nodes from a plurality of nodes to use for converting the file to a target file format for providing the preview,

wherein each of the plurality of nodes represents a specific version of a conversion tool maintained by the web-based collaboration platform for converting an input file from a first file format to a second file format using a particular algorithm, and

further wherein the preferred sequence of nodes is based upon priority-costs associated with the plurality of nodes;

providing by the server to the user the preview of the file using the target file format.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising if a conversion tool corresponding to a particular node fails to create a sufficient output file, removing the particular node from the plurality of nodes and determining a next preferred sequence of nodes.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the priority-cost associated with each of the plurality of nodes includes one or more of:

how long a conversion tool takes to perform a conversion, a quality of the output file of a conversion tool, and system preferences for converting the input file format into a particular file format.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of nodes are part of a network graph, and determining the preferred sequence of nodes comprises solving the network graph.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising responding to the request only if the user is an authorized collaborator of the folder.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising responding to the request if the user uploaded the file to the web-based collaboration platform.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the preferred sequence of nodes includes conversion of the input file format to one or more intermediate file formats.

8. A method of rendering a file having a first file format for display as a preview, the method comprising:

receiving by a server a request from a user to preview the file, wherein the file is stored in a workspace in a web-based collaboration platform;

using by the server instructions provided by a modified software code to generate a target format file from the first file format of the file, wherein an unmodified version of the software code uses a first library for parsing the first file format of the file, and the modified software code uses a second library for parsing the first file format of the file, wherein the second library has improvements over the first library;

providing by the server to the user a preview of the file using the generated target format of the file.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the first file format is a PDF format, and the target format is a SWF format.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the unmodified version of the software code is the pdf2swf program provided by SWFTools library.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the first library is the xpdf library, and the second library is the Poppler library.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein the improvements include PBM picture support, corrected transparency values, improved template support, and drawing improvements.

13. The method of claim 8, further comprising responding to the request only if the user is an authorized collaborator of the workspace.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising providing a notification of the previewing of the file by the user to a collaborator of the workspace of the web-based collaboration platform.

15. The method of claim 8, wherein the target format is a PDF format.

16. The method of claim 8, wherein the target format is an HTML format.

17. The method of claim 8, wherein the target format is a SWF format.

18. A system for rendering a file having a first file format for display as a preview, the system comprising:

a file format rendering engine configured to;

use instructions provided by a modified software code to generate a target format file from the first file format of the file, wherein an unmodified version of the software code uses a first library for parsing the first file format of the file, and the modified software code uses a second library for parsing the first file format of the file;

a viewer configured to provide to a user a preview of the file using the generated target format of the file;

a first memory configured to store the modified software code.

19. The system of claim 18, further comprising a second memory configured to store the second library.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the file is stored in a folder in an online content management system that provides a collaboration environment, and the user is an authorized collaborator of the folder.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the first file format is a PDF format, and the target format is a SWF format.

22. The system of claim 18, wherein the target format is a PDF format.

23. The system of claim 18, wherein the target format is an HTML format.

24. The system of claim 18, wherein the target format is a SWF format.

25. A system comprising:

a conversion engine configured to;

receive parameters for specifying a target file format, wherein the target file format is selected from a plurality of target file formats;

generating the target file format from an input file format of a file;

a viewer configured to provide to a user a preview of the file using the generated target file format.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the plurality of target file formats includes PDF format, HTML format, and SWF format.

27. A system, comprising:

a network graph generator configured to;

generate a network graph, wherein the network graph comprises a plurality of nodes, each node represents a specific version of a conversion tool maintained by a conversion system for converting a file from a first file format to a second file format using a particular algorithm; and

assign a priority-cost is assigned to each of the plurality of nodes; and

a network graph solver configured to solve the network graph based upon the priority-cost for each of the plurality of nodes to find a preferred set of conversion tools needed to convert a given input file format to a target output file format.

28. The system of claim 27, wherein if a conversion tool corresponding to a particular node fails to create a sufficient output file, the network graph generator is further configured to remove the particular node from the network graph.

29. The system of claim 27, wherein the priority-cost for each of the plurality of nodes includes one or more of:

how long a conversion tool takes to perform a conversion, a quality of the output file of a conversion tool, and system preferences for converting the input file format into a particular file format.

30. A system, comprising:

means for defining a plurality of nodes, wherein each node represents a specific version of a conversion tool maintained by a conversion system for converting a file from a first file format to a second file format using a particular algorithm;

means for determining a priority-cost for each of the plurality of nodes;

means for determining an optimum sequence of nodes to use for converting a file having an input file format to a target file format based upon priority-costs.