System and method for audio hot spotting
First Claim
1. A method of searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
- specifying one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds;
searching an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes using statistical attributes respectively associated with the classes, wherein the range of sounds of a given class satisfy statistical attributes of the given class, and wherein the searching step is effective irrespective of whether any occurrence of the audio track of the multimedia file was used to generate the statistical attributes of the classes;
retrieving at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes specified in the specifying step; and
providing, to a user, the retrieved segment of the multimedia file,wherein the user examines the retrieved segment of the multimedia file to determine at least one of a content of the file, a context of the file, and a relevance of the file.
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Abstract
Audio hot spotting is accomplished by specifying query criterion to include a non-lexical audio cue. The non-lexical audio cue can be, e.g., speech rate, laughter, applause, vocal effort, speaker change or any combination thereof. The query criterion is retrieved from an audio portion of a file. A segment of the file containing the query criterion can be provided to a user. The duration of the provided segment can be specified by the user along with the files to be searched. A list of detections of the query criterion within the file can also be provided to the user. Searches can be refined by the query criterion additionally including a lexical audio-cue. A keyword index of topic terms contained in the file can also be provided to the user.
28 Citations
37 Claims
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1. A method of searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
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specifying one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds; searching an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes using statistical attributes respectively associated with the classes, wherein the range of sounds of a given class satisfy statistical attributes of the given class, and wherein the searching step is effective irrespective of whether any occurrence of the audio track of the multimedia file was used to generate the statistical attributes of the classes; retrieving at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes specified in the specifying step; and providing, to a user, the retrieved segment of the multimedia file, wherein the user examines the retrieved segment of the multimedia file to determine at least one of a content of the file, a context of the file, and a relevance of the file.
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2. A method of searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
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specifying a query criterion that comprises one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds; querying an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes using statistical attributes respectively associated with the classes, wherein the range of sounds of a given class satisfy statistical attributes of the given class, and wherein the searching step is effective irrespective of whether any occurrence of the audio track of the multimedia file was used to generate the statistical attributes of the classes; retrieving at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes specified in the specifying step; and providing, to a user, the retrieved segment of the multimedia file, wherein the user examines the retrieved segment of the file to determine at least one of a content of the file, a context of the file, and a relevance of the file. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A system for searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
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a user interface for specifying a query criterion comprising one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds; and an audio feature extractor that (i) queries an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes using statistical attributes respectively associated with the classes, wherein the range of sounds of a given class satisfy statistical attributes of the given class, and wherein the searching step is effective irrespective of whether any occurrence of the audio track of the multimedia file was used to generate the statistical attributes of the classes;
(ii) retrieves at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes specified in the specifying step;
(iii) provides to a user, the retrieved segment of the multimedia file,wherein the user examines the retrieved segment of the file to determine at least one of a content of the file, a context of the file, and a relevance of the file. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32)
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33. A system for searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
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user interface module for specifying a query criterion that comprises one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds; and audio feature extracting module for, (i) querying an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes using statistical attributes respectively associated with the classes, wherein the range of sounds of a given class satisfy statistical attributes of the given class, and wherein the searching step is effective irrespective of whether any occurrence of the audio track of the multimedia file was used to generate the statistical attributes of the classes;
(ii) retrieving at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes specified in the specifying step;
(iii) providing to a user, the retrieved segment of the multimedia file,wherein the user examines the retrieved segment of the file to determine at least one of a content of the file, a context of the file, and a relevance of the file. - View Dependent Claims (34, 35, 36, 37)
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Specification