Media content catalog service

• US 7,962,937 B2
• Filed: 08/01/2006
• Issued: 06/14/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Cho, Wei Wei Ada, Husak, Stephen R., Ge, Liang, Hydrie, Aamer
• Primary Examiner(s): Kelley; Christopher
• Assistant Examiner(s): Shepard; Justin E
• Application Number:
  US11/461,589
• Publication Number:
  US 20080046929A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,778 Days
• Field of Search: 725/48
• US Class Current: 725/44
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26283 for associating distribution time parameters to content, e.g. to generate electronic program guide data
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26291 for providing content or additional data updates, e.g. updating software modules, stored at the client deployment, distribution, installation, update of software G06F8/65; error detection or correction during software upgrading G06F11/1433; arrangements for updating broadcast information or broadcast-related information H04H60/25
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26603 for automatically generating descriptors from content, e.g. when it is not made available by its provider, using content analysis techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2665 Gathering content from different sources, e.g. Internet and satellite
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/462 Content or additional data management, e.g. creating a master electronic program guide from data received from the Internet and a Head-end, controlling the complexity of a video stream by scaling the resolution or bit-rate based on the client capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4622 Retrieving content or additional data from different sources, e.g. from a broadcast channel and the Internet web site content organization and management for information retrieval from the Internet G06F16/958; transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82; stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services including data channel over packet-switching network H04L12/1859
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/84 Generation or processing of descriptive data, e.g. content descriptors systems specially adapted for using meta-information in broadcast systems H04H60/73
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

Aggregating media content catalog data from a plurality of content providers. The catalog data is merged according to rules and provided to a user on a scheduled basis or on demand. In an embodiment, the merged catalog data represents an incremental update to previously delivered catalog data.

Claims

1. A computerized method executable by a processor of a catalog service for providing a catalog of media files, said media files being accessible remotely by a client computer, said method comprising:

receiving a plurality of source collections from a plurality of content providers, each of said source collections comprising a plurality of media files and metadata associated therewith available from at least one corresponding content providers, wherein a subset of the media files from different content providers have similar content, and wherein a subset of the metadata from the different content providers have non-identical content;

row level interlinking the source collections based on rules stored in a memory area associated with the catalog service, said row level interlinking further comprising determining a similarity score for at least one of the stored rules and performing said row level interlinking when the similarity score is greater than a minimum similarity threshold;

collection level interlinking the row level interlinked source collection into a destination collection, said collection level interlinking comprising;

calculating a collection similarity as a function of a match count and one or more of;

a source collection count of the row level interlinked source collections and a specified destination collection count of the destination collection;

selecting one of the media files of the subset of media files having similar content when the calculated collection similarity exceeds a minimum collection similarity; and

generating combined metadata mapping the interlinked source collections as a priority of each of the source collections;

generating a user catalog from the destination collection in a pre-defined catalog format for consumption by a user via the client computer, said user catalog including the selected media file and further including, associated with the selected media file, the combined metadata; and

transmitting at least a portion of the generated user catalog to the client computer.

2. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein receiving the source collections comprises importing and loading a data feed from each of the plurality of content providers.

3. The computerized method of claim 1, further comprising defining the catalog format according to a multi-field schema and wherein row level interlinking includes parsing the catalog data received from the plurality of content providers and assigning the parsed catalog data to one or more fields of the multi-field schema.

4. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the catalog format comprises an action type for catalog data received from each of the content providers, and wherein the action type comprises one or more of the following:

add, edit, and delete.

5. The computerized method of claim 3, wherein the multi-field schema comprises one or more of the following:

a virtual channels data field, a video data field, a video group data field, a video series data field, a contributor data field, a poster data field, a trailer data field, and a supplementary data field.

6. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured for providing a network interface for delivering the generated user catalog to the client computer.

7. The computerized method of claim 6, wherein generating the user catalog comprises propagating the user catalog to a front end database for access by the network interface.

8. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured for periodically updating the user catalog by transmitting a portion of the generated user catalog to the client computer.

9. The computerized method of claim 8, wherein transmitting the portion of the generated user catalog comprises transmitting, to the client computer, an incremental update to a previously transmitted user catalog.

10. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein one or more computer-readable storage media have computer executable instructions for performing the method recited in claim 1.

11. A system of providing a consistent user experience when viewing a catalog of metadata, said system comprising:

a memory area for storing a plurality of interlinking rules, said memory area further storing a plurality of source collections from a plurality of content providers, each of said source collections comprising metadata associated with a plurality of media files available from at least one corresponding content providers, wherein a subset of the media files from different content providers have similar content, and wherein a subset of the metadata from the different content providers have non-identical content; and

a processor configured to execute computer-executable instructions for;

configuring the interlinking rules stored in the memory area according to input from a user, wherein each of the rules includes a minimum similarity threshold score for defining similarity;

row level interlinking the source collections in the memory area based on the configured rules, said row level interlinking comprising comparing the metadata from the catalog data and determining a similarity score for each of the rules, wherein the row level interlinking is performed for each of the rules when the similarity score is greater than the minimum similarity threshold;

collection level interlinking the row level interlinked source collection into a destination collection, said collection level interlinking comprising;

calculating a collection similarity as a function of a match count and one or more of;

a source collection count of the row level interlinked source collections and a specified destination collection count of the destination collection;

selecting one of the media files of the subset of media files having similar content when the calculated collection similarity exceeds a minimum collection similarity; and

generating combined metadata mapping the interlinked source collections as a priority of each of the source collections;

associating the combined metadata with the selected media file; and

formatting the destination collection into a defined catalog format for delivery to the user.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to receive the source collections from the plurality of content providers and to store the received source collections in the memory area.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the metadata includes one or more of the following fields:

virtual channel metadata and virtual group metadata.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the virtual channel metadata comprise a video list defining one or more video elements and a contributor list defining one or more contributor elements, wherein each of the video elements has an identifier and a title associated therewith, and wherein each of the contributor elements identifies a contributor to the media content.

15. The system of claim 11, further comprising an aggregation engine executed by the processor for interlinking the media files and metadata, and wherein the processor is further configured to execute computer-executable instructions for updating the interlinking rules without recompiling the aggregation engine.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the memory area further stores a data structure representing the interlinked source collections.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the formatted destination collection delivered to the user comprises an incremental update to previously delivered destination collection.

18. The system of claim 11, further comprising means for aggregating the metadata items from the source collections into the interlinked source collections.

19. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-executable components comprising:

a rules component for enabling configuration, by a user, of rules for interlinking media files and metadata from a plurality of content providers, wherein a subset of the media files from different content providers have similar content;

an interface component for receiving, from at least one content providers, a plurality of source collections, each of said source collections comprising a plurality of media files and metadata associated therewith, said metadata including channel metadata and group metadata, said channel metadata and group metadata describing one or more media files associated with the metadata;

an aggregation engine component for row level interlinking the source collections into predefined input tables by evaluating, for each of the configured rules, a similarity score between at least the channel metadata and group metadata from each of the plurality of media files in each of the source collections to identify similar media files, said aggregation engine component row level interlinking the source collections based on each of the rules in which the similarity score is greater than a minimum similarity score threshold for the rule, said aggregation component further collection level interlinking the row level interlinked predefined input tables into a predefined output table as a destination collection as a function of a minimum collection similarity and selecting one of the subset of media files having similar content, said aggregation component further generating combined metadata mapping the interlinked metadata as a priority of each source collection; and

a front end component for providing the selected media file and, associated with the selected media file, the combined metadata as part of the destination collection to a user.

20. The computer-readable storage media of claim 19, wherein the rules component updates the interlinking rules based on input from the user without recompiling the aggregation engine component.