Methods and apparatus for archiving, indexing and accessing audio and video data

• US 7,035,468 B2
• Filed: 04/20/2001
• Issued: 04/25/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Distributed Media Solutions, LLC (IP Investments Group LLC)
• Original Assignee: Front Porch Digital Inc. (Genstar Capital LLC)
• Inventors: Gupta, Bobby R., Martucci, Stephen A., Fendt, Melanie R., Yogeshwar, Jay, Venzie, Frederick M. III
• Primary Examiner(s): Do, Anh Hong
• Application Number:
  US09/839,439
• Publication Number:
  US 20040096110A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,831 Days
• Field of Search: 370/486, 370/315, 370/475, 370/535, 370/412, 375/240.16, 375/240.2, 345/547, 706/45, 382/239, 382/253, 382/232, 382/247, 358/426.14, 348/441, 348/459, 348/14.14
• US Class Current: 382/232
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/41 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/51 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• 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 16/71 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/78 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

Archival storage and retrieval of audio/video information is described. Audio and/or video information is digitized, compressed and stored in an intermediate archive format (IAF), which preserves the content at a high-enough quality for subsequent retrieval and conversion into various formats required at the time of use or distribution. A single capture operation is performed with ancillary metadata being added to facilitate subsequent searching, indexing and format conversion. Captured data content is catalogued and indexed at or subsequent to the creation of an IAF file that includes the archived information. The IAF includes a family of audio-video digital encoding formats based on public standards. The encoding format used in any particular application is determined at encoding time from information provided by the archive system user. At encoding, the particular encoding scheme is selected to optimize a tradeoff between storage constraints and end use quality requirements.

Claims

1. A method of processing image data representing at least one image, the method comprising:

receiving information including at least one of image quality information and image use information;

selecting a first encoding format from a plurality of supported encoding formats as a function of said received information;

selecting the quality level at which the at least one image represented by said image data is to be encoded using the selected encoding format based on the received information, wherein the quality level is selected from a plurality of supported encoding quality levels including at least a first quality level which is a lossless or near loss-less quality level;

a second quality level which is a contribution quality level; and

a third quality level which is a distribution quality level, the distribution quality level being the level of image quality to be used for distribution of the image to an end viewer;

encoding said image data according to the first encoding format to thereby generate first encoded image data representing said image; and

storing the first encoded image data using a digital data storage device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information includes image quality information that indicates a desired minimum level of image quality at which an image is to be preserved.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of selecting the first encoding format includes selecting the first encoding format to be an encoding format which will preserve the image at a level of quality at least as good as the indicated minimum level of image quality.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information includes image quality information that indicates the quality of the at least one image represented by said image data.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the step of selecting the first encoding format includes selecting the first encoding format to be an encoding format which will preserve the image at a level of quality equal to or lower than the indicated quality of the at least one image represented by said image data.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

analyzing said image data to generate image quality information received in said step of receiving information.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

querying a human for said image quality information.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information further includes data storage limitation information;

and

wherein the step of selecting a first encoding format is further performed as a function of the received data storage limitation information.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information further includes image source information which indicates a format in which the at least one image represented by said image data was previously stored;

and

wherein the step of selecting a first encoding format is further performed as a function of the received image source information.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information further includes image source information which indicates a type of data storage media which was previously used to store said image data prior to performing said encoding step;

and

wherein the step of selecting a first encoding format is further performed as a function of the data storage media information.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the indicated type of data storage media includes at least one of digital tape, analog tape and movie film.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information further includes data storage limitation information;

and

wherein the step of selecting the quality level at which the at least one image is encoded is further performed as a function of the received data storage limitation information.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information further includes image source information which indicates a format in which the at least one image was previously stored;

and

wherein the step of selecting the quality level at which the at least one image is encoded is further performed as a function of the received image source information.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the received information further includes image source information which indicates a type of data storage media which was previously used to store said image prior to performing said encoding;

and

wherein the step of selecting the quality level at which the at least one image is encoded is further performed as a function of the received image source limitation information.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein said plurality of image formats includes at least two of the encoding formats in the set of MPEG, JPEG and DV encoding formats.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein said image use information indicates at least one data distribution use.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the indicated data distribution use includes at least one of cable television, satellite broadcast, terrestrial television and Internet.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein said image use information indicates an image archiving use.

19. A method of processing image data representing at least one image, the method comprising:

receiving information including at least one of image quality information and image use information;

selecting a first encoding format from a plurality of supported encoding formats as a function of said received information;

encoding said image data according to the first encoding format to thereby generate first encoded image data representing said image;

storing the first encoded image data using a digital data storage device;

retrieving the first encoded image data from the digital data storage device;

converting the first encoded image data from the first encoding format to a second encoding format to produce second encoded image data, the second encoded format being different from the first encoding format;

outputting the second encoded image data;

converting the first encoded image data from the first encoding format to a third encoding format to produce third encoded image data, the third encoded format being different from the first and second encoding formats; and

outputting the third encoded image data.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the step of converting the first encoded image data from the first encoding format to a second encoding format includes:

decoding said first encoded image data to generate decoded image data; and

re-encoding said decoded image data according to the second encoding format.

21. A digital storage medium comprising computer executable instructions for controlling a computer system to:

receive information including at least one of image quality information and image use information;

select a first encoding format from a plurality of supported encoding formats as a function of said received information;

select the quality level at which the at least one image represented by said image data is to be encoded using the selected encoding format based on the received information, wherein the quality level is selected from a plurality of supported encoding quality levels including at least a first quality level which is a lossless or near loss-less quality level;

a second quality level which is a intermediate quality level that is lower than said first quality level; and

a third quality level which is a distribution quality level, the distribution quality level being lower than the second quality level and being the level of image quality to be used for distribution of the image to an end viewer;

encode image data according to the first encoding format to thereby generate first encoded image data representing said image; and

store the first encoded image data using a digital data storage device.

22. A system for processing and storing at least one of audio and video data, the system comprising:

a compression module supporting a plurality of different encoding formats, the compression module including a plurality of encoding modules, each encoding module capable of performing data encoding according to a different standardized encoding format;

a control module for selecting from the plurality of encoding formats, an encoding format to be used with a given set of data supplied to the compression module;

means for selecting the quality level at which the at least one image represented by said image data is to be encoded using the selected encoding format based on the received information, wherein the quality level is selected from a plurality of supported encoding quality levels including at least a first quality level which is a lossless or near loss-less quality level;

a second quality level which is an intermediate quality level which is lower than said first quality level; and

a third quality level which is lower than said intermediate quality level, the third quality level being a distribution quality level, the distribution quality level being the level of image quality to be used for distribution of the image to a plurality of end viewers; and

a data storage device coupled to the compression module for storing encoded data generated by said compression module.

23. A system for processing and storing at least one of audio and video data, the system comprising:

a compression module supporting a plurality of different encoding formats, the compression module including a plurality of encoding modules, each encoding module capable of performing data encoding according to a different standardized encoding format;

a control module for selecting from the plurality of encoding formats, an encoding format to be used with a given set of data supplied to the compression module;

an analysis module capable of performing an indexing operation on encoded data and generating index information therefrom; and

a wrapper module coupled to said compression module, the storage device and the analysis module, the wrapper module supplying encoded data generated by said compression module to said analysis module and incorporating index information received from said analysis module into a file that includes the encoded data supplied to said analysis module;

a data storage device coupled to the wrapper module for storing the file that includes the encoded data generated by said compression module;

a data retrieval module for retrieving encoded data stored in the data storage device; and

a transcoder module for converting encoded data retrieved from the data storage device from a format in which the data was stored to a different data format.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the transcoder module includes:

a plurality of decoders, each decoder in the plurality of decoder circuits being capable of decoding at least one of said encoding formats supported by the compression module.

25. The system of claim 23, wherein the transcoder module further includes:

a plurality of encoders coupled to the plurality of decoder, the plurality of encoders including encoders which support different encoding formats.

26. The system of claim 24, wherein the transcoder module further includes:

means for outputting data generated by multiple encoders included in said plurality of encoders, from the same decoded data generated by one of said plurality of decoders.

27. The system of claim 23, wherein the data analysis module includes:

decoder circuitry for decoding encoded data; and

an indexing circuit for generating indexing information by analyzing decoded data generated by said decoder circuitry.

28. The system of claim 23, wherein said data retrieval module is coupled to said storage device and the analysis module, the data retrieval module controlling the retrieval of encoded data from the storage device to be supplied to the analysis module for indexing;

and

wherein the analysis module indexes retrieved encoded data to generate index information.

29. The system of claim 28, further comprising:

an archive storage manager module for coupling the data retrieval module to the analysis module and for adding index information generated by said analysis module from processing retrieved encoded data to the file from which the encoded data was retrieved.

30. The system of claim 23, further comprising:

a preview module coupled to said transcoder for displaying images generated from encoded data produced by said transcoder.

31. The system of claim 24, further comprising:

a preview module coupled to said compression module for displaying images generated from encoded data generated by said compression module.

32. The system of claim 23, further comprising:

means for receiving information including at least one of image quality information and image use information; and

wherein the control module includes;

means for selecting the encoding format to be used with a given set of data supplied to the compression module as a function of said received information.

33. A method of operating a system to process image data representing an image, the method comprising:

receiving image source information indicating at least one of a type of storage media previously used to store the image data and, a storage format in which the image data was stored;

automatically selecting a first encoding format from a plurality of supported encoding formats as a function of said received information;

operating the system to encode said image data according to the first encoding format to thereby generate first encoded image data representing said image;

storing the first encoded image data using a digital data storage device;

retrieving the first encoded image data from the digital data storage device;

converting the first encoded image data from the first encoding format to a second encoding format to produce second encoded image data, the second encoded format being different from the first encoding format; and

outputting the second encoded image data; and

converting the first encoded image data from the first encoding format to a third encoding format to produce third encoded image data, the third encoded format being different from the first and second encoding formats; and

outputting the third encoded image data.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein the received image source information indicates the type of storage media previously used to be at least one of digital tape, analog tape, and movie film.

35. The method of claim 33, wherein the received image source information indicates the source format to be one of a JPEG, a DV and an MPEG format.