Information processing device for selectively locating and reading description information of multi-media content divided into a time series at a first level that is further divided and correlated to a second level using a keyword/ID information and reference information representative of the keyword/ID

• US 8,301,663 B2
• Filed: 03/31/2010
• Issued: 10/30/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Watanabe, Shuichi, Kiyama, Jiro
• Primary Examiner(s): Perveen, Rehana
• Assistant Examiner(s): Phillips, III, Albert
• Application Number:
  US12/798,265
• Publication Number:
  US 20100198853A1
• Time in Patent Office: 944 Days
• Field of Search: 707/791, 707/796, 707/E17.123, 707/E17.127
• US Class Current: 707/796
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/70 of video data
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/00 Signal processing not specific to the method of recording or reproducing; Circuits therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/34 Indicating arrangements indicating means incorporated in magazine or cassette G11B23/046 and G11B23/0875; indicating measured values in general G01D
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2353 specifically adapted to content descriptors, e.g. coding, compressing or processing of metadata
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/433 Content storage operation, e.g. storage operation in response to a pause request, caching operations
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8455 involving pointers to the content, e.g. pointers to the I-frames of the video stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/163 by receiver means only
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8205 involving the multiplexing of an additional signal and the colour video signal

Abstract

There are provided a storage device and a computer-readable medium capable of efficiently storing keywords contained in description information and efficiently retrieving the keyword. A list producing portion (6) extracts the keywords from the description information and produces a keyword list correlating the keywords with the scene information containing the keywords. A description information converter (8) converts the keywords contained in the keyword list received from the list producing portion (6) among the keywords contained in the externally received description information into reference information for specifying the keywords in the keyword list received from the list producing portion (6). A storage (10) stores the converted description information provided from the description information converter (8) and the keyword list provided from the list producing portion (6).

Claims

1. An information processing device for reading from a storage medium storing description information describing multimedia contents in a tree structure including a plurality of nodes at a first level correlated with a plurality of scenes divided in time series, respectively, for processing,

said description information including a plurality of nodes at a second level, each correlated with one of said plurality of nodes at the first level, and for describing an item including at least an actor and/or a character,

each of said plurality of nodes at the second level including a keyword that is an entity of said item,

said description information configured by determining an overlapping keyword among keywords included in said plurality of nodes at the second level included in original description information, adding ID information representing the keyword to a node at the second level corresponding to at least one keyword located at a relatively earlier position in time series, among the overlapping keywords identified by the determination, and

replacing each of the nodes at the second level corresponding to respective overlapping keywords located at a relatively later position in time series with respect to the keyword to which said ID information is added, with a reference node to specify said ID information,

said information processing device comprising:

means for accepting a selection of a keyword,

means for obtaining ID information corresponding to the selected keyword and a reference node identifying the ID information from said description information stored in said storage medium, and

means for retrieving a position where said keyword is located in said multimedia contents based on information of a scene correlated with each of a node to which the obtained ID information is added and the obtained reference node.

2. The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein replacement with said reference node is provided by replacing all nodes at the second level corresponding to respective keywords located at a relatively later position in time series with respect to the keyword to which said ID information was added, with a node of a shorter string, including only reference information to the ID information representing the relevant keyword.

3. The information processing device according to claim 1, further comprising means for reproducing a scene corresponding to a position where the keyword obtained by retrieval is located, in said multimedia contents.