SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR SEARCHING BASED ON INFORMATION IN COMMERCIALS

• US 20140259042A1
• Filed: 05/19/2014
• Published: 09/11/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: White, Scott, Cansler, James, Scott, Charles V.
• Granted Patent: US 9,009,751 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4334 Recording operations recording of a television signal H04N5/76; arrangements for recording or accumulating broadcast information or broadcast-related information H04H60/27
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44008 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics in the video stream arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/442 Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. detecting the failure of a recording device, monitoring the downstream bandwidth, the number of times a movie has been viewed, the storage space available from the internal hard disk arrangements for monitoring broadcast services or broadcast-related services H04H60/29; arrangements for identifying or recognising characteristics with a direct linkage to broadcast information H04H60/35; monitoring of user activities for profile generation for accessing a video database G06F16/739; monitoring in wireless networks H04W24/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44224 Monitoring of user activity on external systems, e.g. Internet browsing
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4821 using a grid, e.g. sorted out by channel and broadcast time
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4826 using recommendation lists, e.g. of programs or channels sorted out according to their score
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4828 for searching program descriptors retrieval of video data G06F16/739
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/84 Generation or processing of descriptive data, e.g. content descriptors systems specially adapted for using meta-information in broadcast systems H04H60/73

Abstract

A system that incorporates teachings of the subject disclosure may include, for example, determining if a commercial contains one of metadata, close captioning information, recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, or a combination thereof In response to determining that the commercial does not contain metadata, but does contain close captioning information, an advertised show is identified based on the close captioning information. Likewise, in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata, nor close captioning information, but does contain recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, the advertised show is identified based on the recognizable speech. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. A device comprising:

a memory to store executable instructions; and

a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor when executing the instructions performs operations comprising;

determining if a commercial contains one of metadata, close captioning information, recognizable text in a video component of the commercial, recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, or combination thereof;

in response to determining that the commercial does not contain metadata, but does contain close captioning information, identifying advertised video content based on the close captioning information;

in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata nor close captioning information, but does contain recognizable text in the video component of the commercial, identifying the advertised video content based on the recognizable text; and

in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata, nor close captioning information, nor recognizable text, but does contain recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, identifying the advertised video content based on the recognizable speech.

2. The device of claim 1, wherein the identifying the advertised video content comprise using a signature of the commercial, the signature comprising a hash of digital information, and wherein the operations further comprise:

recording of the advertised video content that is available at a later time,

presenting a first search option to search for the advertised video content and a second search option to search for content similar to the advertised video content; and

receiving an input corresponding to a selected one of the first search option and the second search option.

3. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise:

analyzing the commercial for metadata of the commercial for identifying information including one of a title, a genre, a list of people associated with an advertised product, or a combination thereof, if the commercial contains metadata, and

downloading of the advertised video content for purchase.

4. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise:

isolating speech from audio of the commercial;

analyzing the commercial by extracting the speech from the audio of the commercial;

converting the speech to text information; and

analyzing the text if the commercial contains recognizable speech in the audio component.

5. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise analyzing the commercial by performing optical character recognition on the video component of the commercial to extract the text from the video component of the commercial, which includes text indicating a channel and a time for a broadcast.

6. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise searching an electronic programming guide for availability of the advertised video content based on one of the metadata, the close captioning text, the recognizable text, or the recognizable speech.

7. The device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise:

detecting the commercial; and

extracting speech-to-text converted text from the recognizable speech in the audio component of the commercial.

8. A machine-readable storage medium, comprising executable instructions which, responsive to being executed by a processor, cause the processor to facilitate performance of operations comprising:

determining if a commercial contains one of metadata, close captioning information, recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, or a combination thereof;

in response to determining that the commercial does not contain metadata, but does contain close captioning information, identifying an advertised show based on the close captioning information; and

in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata, nor close captioning information, but does contain recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, identifying the advertised show based on the recognizable speech.

9. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the identifying the advertised show comprise using a signature of the commercial, the signature comprising a hash of digital information of the commercial, and wherein the operations further comprise detecting the commercial.

10. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise analyzing the commercial using closed-caption information of the commercial to identify information including a title and a channel of a broadcast if the commercial contains close caption information.

11. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise:

analyzing the commercial by extracting speech from audio of the commercial;

converting the speech to text; and

analyzing the text if the commercial contains recognizable speech in the audio component.

12. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the determining comprises determining if the commercial contains one of metadata, close captioning information, recognizable text in a video component of the commercial, recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, or a combination thereof, wherein the operations further comprise in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata nor close captioning information, but does contain, within the video component of the commercial, recognizable text, identifying the show based on the recognizable text.

13. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise searching an electronic programming guide for availability of the advertised show based on one of the metadata, the close captioning text, the recognizable text, or the recognizable speech.

14. The machine-readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise:

presenting a first option to search for first video content related to the advertised show and a second option to search for second video content similar to the advertised show;

receiving an input corresponding to a selected of one of the first option and the second option;

searching for one of the first video content or the second video content based on the selected one of the first option and the second option; and

recording a resulting one of the first video content and the second video content in response to a user input.

15. A method, comprising:

determining, by a system comprising a processor, if a commercial contains one of metadata, recognizable text in a video component of the commercial, or recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial;

in response to determining that the commercial contains metadata, identifying, by the system, content advertised in the commercial based on the metadata;

in response to determining that the commercial does not contain metadata, but does contain recognizable text in the video component of the commercial, identifying, by the system, the content advertised in the commercial based on the recognizable text; and

in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata, nor recognizable text, but does contain recognizable speech in the audio component of the commercial, identifying, by the system, the content advertised in the commercial based on the recognizable speech.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the determining comprises determining if the commercial contains one of metadata, close captioning information, recognizable text in a video component of the commercial, recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, or a combination thereof, wherein the method further comprises, in response to determining that the commercial does not contain metadata but does contain close captioning information, identifying the content advertised in the commercial based on the close captioning information.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising searching, by the system, for content similar to the content advertised in the commercial.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the content similar to the content advertised in the commercial comprises one of content having a similar genre to the content advertised in the commercial, content associated with one of an actor or director participating in the content advertised in the commercial, previous episodes of a series comprising the content advertised in the commercial, an adaptation of the content advertised in the commercial, a commercial product, or a combination thereof.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein the content advertised in the commercial includes a program advertised in the commercial.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the content similar to the content advertised in the commercial comprises one of content having a similar genre to the content advertised in the commercial, content associated with one of an actor or director participating in the content advertised in the commercial, previous episodes of a series comprising the content advertised in the commercial, an adaptation of the content advertised in the commercial, a commercial product, or a combination thereof.