Hypervideo: information retrieval using time-related multimedia

• US 7,802,177 B2
• Filed: 01/24/2006
• Issued: 09/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Verizon Laboratories Incorporated (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Verizon Laboratories Incorporated (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Inventors: Dey, Jayanta Kumar, Ponte, Jay Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): Hong; Stephen S
• Assistant Examiner(s): Schallhorn; Tyler J
• Application Number:
  US11/337,569
• Publication Number:
  US 20060143174A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,701 Days
• Field of Search: 715/206, 715/256, 715/205, 434/319, 434/320, 707/5, 707/E17.009, 707/E17.108
• US Class Current: 715/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results

Abstract

Disclosed is a method and device for selecting documents, such as Web pages or sites, for presentation to a user, in response to a user expression of interest, during the course of presentation to the user of a document, such as a video or audio selection, whose content varies with time. The method takes advantage of information retrieval techniques to select documents related to the portion of the temporal document in which the user has expressed interest. The method generates the search query to use to select documents by reference to text associated with the portion of the temporal document in which the user has expressed interest, as by using the closed caption test associated with the video, or by using speech recognition techniques. The method further uses a weighting function to weigh the terms used in the search query, depending on their temporal relationship to the user expression of interest.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving, through operation of said computer, an indication of interest at a particular time during display of a temporal document including at least one of audio material and video material;

in response to receiving the indication, identifying through operation of said computer, a portion of the temporal document for which related documents are to be found;

determining, through operation of said computer, text associated with the portion of the temporal document identified;

weighting, through operation of said computer each term in the determined text according to the time at which the term occurs relative to the time at which the indication of interest occurs;

initiating, through operation of said computer, a search to retrieve the related documents by use of information retrieval, techniques as applied to the weighted terms.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the temporal document includes video material and said video material is stored on a video server.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the determined text is determined by application of speech recognition techniques to the audio component of the portion of the temporal document identified.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the determined text is closed-captioned text associated with the portion of the temporal document identified.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the temporal document includes text.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the temporal document text varies with time and the determined text is the temporal document text associated with the portion of the temporal document identified.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the temporal document text includes at least one of:

news bulletins, weather, sports scores or stock transaction or pricing information.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein initiating the search includes transmitting a query that includes the weighted text.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising;

searching collection of documents using the weighted text to determine the related documents;

providing the related documents.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein searching the collection of documents includes utilizing databases comprising information about the collection of documents.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein searching the collection of documents includes evaluating documents in the collection according to a formula giving scores to documents depending upon the occurrence in the documents of the weighted text, and selecting the related documents based on the scores.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the formula gives scores to documents depending further on the occurrence in the document of terms of the temporal document other than the weighted text.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein evaluating documents in the collection includes accessing compressed document surrogates.

14. A computer-implemented method comprising:

Selecting, through operation of said computer, a temporal document to display, the temporal document including at least one of audio material and video material;

displaying, through operation of said computer, the temporal document;

indicating, through operation of said computer, inerest in obtaining related documents at a particular time during of the temporal document;

providing, through operation of said computer, the indication of interest to a system configured to identify a portion of the temporal document for which the related documents are to be found, determine text associated with the portion of the temporal document identified, weight each term in the determined text according to the time at which the term occurs relative to the time at which the indication of interest occurs, and retrieve the related documents by use of information retrieval techniques as applied to the weighted terms; and

receiving, through operation of said computer, the related documents.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein selecting the temporal document includes selecting the temporal document from a displayed list of available temporal documents.