Generation of subtitles or captions for moving pictures

• US 7,191,117 B2
• Filed: 06/11/2001
• Issued: 03/13/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/09/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: British Broadcasting Corporation
• Original Assignee: British Broadcasting Corporation
• Inventors: Lahr, William Oscar, Kirby, David Graham, Poole, Christopher Edward, Wiewiorka, Adam
• Primary Examiner(s): {hacek over (S)}mits; Talivaldis Ivars
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ng; Eunice
• Application Number:
  US10/297,692
• Publication Number:
  US 20040093220A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,101 Days
• Field of Search: 704/235, 704/9
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/20 Natural language analysis semantic analysis of natural language G06F40/30
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/278 Subtitling

Abstract

A method for generating subtitles for audiovisual material received and analyses a text file containing dialogue spoken in audiovisual material and provides a signal representative of the text. The text information and audio signal are aligned in time using time alignment speech recognition and the text and timing information are then output to a subtitle file. Colors can be assigned to different speakers or groups of speakers. Subtitles are derived by receiving and analyzing a text file containing dialogue spoken by considering each word in turn and the next information signal, assigning a score to each subtitle in a plurality of different possible subtitle formatting options which lead to that word. The steps are then repeated until all the words in the text information signal have been used and the subtitle formatting option which gives the best overall score is then derived.

Claims

1. A method of parsing an electronic text file to identify different components thereof, comprising:

identifying blocks of text in an input electronic text file;

providing a plurality of possible script format properties for the blocks;

providing a definition of each of the possible components of the text file;

in relation to each block, determining the value of each script format property;

for each block, determining from the script format properties of the block and the component definitions a probability value that the block is each of the component types;

selecting the component type for each block on the basis of the probabilities being each of the component types; and

generating output file based on the selecting.

2. A method according to claim 1 wherein determining probability values comprises determining probability values using Bayes'"'"' theorem.

3. A method according to claim 1, further comprising parsing the output file to identify different components in the output file.

4. A method according to claim 1 wherein providing a definition comprises providing an adaptively changeable definition.