System and method for optimized property retrieval of stored objects

• US 7,502,820 B2
• Filed: 05/03/2004
• Issued: 03/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Manders, Blake D., Sadovsky, Vladimir, Rosenbloom, Oren, Ternasky, Joseph D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Jean; Frantz B
• Application Number:
  US10/836,260
• Publication Number:
  US 20060031384A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,772 Days
• Field of Search: 709/217, 709/219, 709/231, 709/203, 707/104.1, 707/1, 386/1, 386/4
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

A system and related techniques are provided in the present invention, which generate an interrogation request from an initiator device, to a mobile or other media player. The binary objects which encode the content may include or have associated with them a set of corresponding object properties which help to define each object. According to embodiments of the invention, the initiator may communicate with the responding device using a media-aware protocol such that the initiator may identify one or all of the set of properties paired with all of the objects to be returned. The initiator may then present the objects along with the corresponding properties to a user to manipulate. Because properties may be retrieved in conjunction with, at the same time and using a unified retrieval scheme, the need to query each object identifier one by one for associated properties is removed.

Claims

1. A system for generating a request for retrieval of a set of media object properties, comprising:

an interface to a responder device storing a set of media objects, each of the media objects having an associated set of media object properties; and

a media engine, the media engine communicating with the interface to generate a media enumeration request comprising an aggregate object property command that includes a set of parameters, each parameter having one or more associated fields, each field specifying a value of an associated parameter, wherein, based on the aggregate object property command, the media enumeration request selectively retrieves a plurality of the media object properties corresponding to the set of parameters, for the set of media objects from the responder device.

2. A system according to claim 1, wherein the responder device comprises one of an audio player device, a digital camera device, a video camcorder device, a media-enabled cellular telephone, and a personal digital assistant.

3. A system according to claim 1, wherein the set of media objects comprises at least one of digital audio objects, digital image objects and digital video objects.

4. A system according to claim 1, wherein the set of media object properties comprises at least one of image width, image height, pixel color depth, object byte size, compression data, audio encoding type and video frame rate.

5. A system according to claim 1, wherein the communication with the responder device is communicated using a media transport protocol.

6. A system according to claim 1, wherein the retrieved media object properties and a media object list are streamed to an initiator device in response to the media enumeration request.

7. A system according to claim 6, wherein the initiator device reorders at least one of the media object properties and media object list.

8. A system according to claim 1, wherein each of the media objects comprises binary data.

9. A system according to claim 1, wherein the set of media objects is stored in a media directory of the responder device.

10. A method for generating a request for retrieval of a set of media object properties, comprising:

accessing a responder device storing a set of media objects, each of the media objects having an associated set of media object properties;

communicating a media enumeration request comprising an aggregate object property command to the responder device, wherein the aggregate object property command comprises a set of parameters, and wherein the set of parameters, by way of one or more values associated with each parameter, define the media object properties to be retrieved; and

based on the set of parameters and the associated one or more values, retrieving a plurality of the media object properties associated with the set of media objects from the responder device.

11. A method according to claim 10, wherein the responder device comprises one of an audio player device, a digital camera device, a video camcorder device, a media-enabled cellular telephone, and a personal digital assistant.

12. A method according to claim 10, wherein the set of media objects comprises at least one of digital audio objects, digital image objects and digital video objects.

13. A method according to claim 10, wherein the set of media object properties comprises at least one of image width, image height, pixel color depth, object byte size, compression data, audio encoding type and video frame rate.

14. A method according to claim 10, wherein the communicating with the responder device comprises communicating using a media transport protocol.

15. A method according to claim 10, wherein the retrieving comprises streaming media object properties and a media object list to an initiator device in response to the media enumeration request.

16. A method according to claim 15, further comprising reordering at least one of the media object properties and media object list in the initiator device.

17. A method according to claim 10, wherein each of the media objects comprises binary data.

18. A method according to claim 10, wherein the set of media objects is stored in a media directory of the responder device.

19. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-useable instrutions embodied thereon for performing a method of generating a media object list, the method comprising :

accessing a responder device storing a set of media objects, each of the media objects having an associated set of media object properties;

communicating a media enumeration request comprising an aggregate object property command to the responder device, wherein the media enumeration request is configured to request a plurality of media object properties for the set of media objects in a single aggregate object property command that includes two or more parameters, each parameter having two or more associated fields that define the set of media object properties to be retrieved, and wherein the media enumeration request communicates to the responder device using a media transport protocol;

based on the single aggregate object property command including the two or more parameters and the two or more associated fields, retrieving the plurality of the media object properties associated with the set of media objects from the responder device in the media object list; and

reordering at least one of the plurality of media object properties and the media object list in an initiator device.

20. The media of claim 19, wherein the responder device comprises one of an audio player device, a digital camera device, a video camcorder device, a media-enabled cellular telephone, and a personal digital assistant.

21. The media of claim 19, wherein the set of media objects represented in the media object list comprises at least one of digital audio objects, digital image objects and digital video objects.

22. The media of claim 19, wherein the set of media object properties comprises at least one of image width, image height, pixel color depth, object byte size, compression data, audio encoding type and video frame rate.

23. The media of claim 19, wherein the retrieving comprises streaming media object properties and the media object list to the initiator device in response to the media enumeration request.

24. The media of claim 19, wherein each of the media objects comprises binary data.

25. A media player device having a processor and one or more computer-readable storage media, the media player device being configured to generate a media object list including a plurality of media object properties, comprising:

a media object store, the media object store storing a set of media objects and associated media object properties, wherein the set of media object properties comprises at least one of image width, image height, pixel color depth, object byte size, compression data, audio encoding type and video frame rate;

an interface to an initiator device, the initiator device transmitting a media enumeration request via the interface, wherein the media enumeration request is configured to request a plurality of media object properties corresponding to the set of media objects in an aggregate object property command that includes a set of parameters, each parameter having two or more fields that specify values associated with the parameter; and

control logic, the control logic responding the media enumeration request to selectively retrieve a plurality of the media object properties, corresponding to the set of parameters for the set of media objects from the media object store.

26. The media player device according to claim 25, wherein the media player comprises one of an audio player device, a digital camera device, a video camcorder device, a media-enabled cellular telephone, and a personal digital assistant.

27. The media player device according to claim 25, wherein the set of media objects comprises at least one of digital audio objects, digital image objects and digital video objects.

28. The media player device according to claim 25, wherein the communication with the initiator device is communicated using a media transport protocol.

29. The media player device according to claim 25, wherein the retrieved media object properties and a media object list are streamed to the initiator device in response to the media enumeration request.

30. The media player device according to claim 25, wherein each of the media objects comprises binary data.

31. The media player device according to claim 25, wherein the media data store comprises a media directory.