Broadcast video monitoring and alerting system

• US 8,924,383 B2
• Filed: 10/24/2005
• Issued: 12/30/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/06/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: AT&T Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Begeja, Lee, Chen, Yih-Farn, Gibbon, David Crawford, Huang, Huale, Jana, Rittwik, Liu, Zhu, Renger, Bernard S., Shahraray, Behzad, Wei, Bin
• Primary Examiner(s): HASAN, SYED HAROON
• Application Number:
  US11/256,755
• Publication Number:
  US 20060117040A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,354 Days
• Field of Search: 707/725, 707/913
• US Class Current: 707/736
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/437 Administration of user profiles, e.g. generation, initialisation, adaptation, distribution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/735 Filtering based on additional data, e.g. user or group profiles

Abstract

Described is a system and method for automatic monitoring and dissemination of media content. The system and method include a content acquisition platform receiving media content from at least one source and storing the media content in a media storage platform, a media processing platform segmenting the media content based upon predetermined criteria defined by a user and storing metadata corresponding to the segmented media content in the media storage platform, an alert platform providing the user with an alert identifying the segmented media content, the alert including at least a portion of the metadata stored in the media storage platform and a content delivery platform sending the segmented media content to a device of the user.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a content acquisition platform executed on a processor and to receive media content including a video file and a related audio file of a broadcast television program broadcast without metadata and without closed captioning from a source and store the media content in a media storage platform;

a media processing platform to segment the media content based upon predetermined criteria defined by a user, generate metadata in real time, and store the metadata in an index in the media storage platform, corresponding to the media content segmented, the metadata including a dialog approximation based on speech recognition of the media content by the media processing platform, a topic boundary, and a scene boundary;

an alert platform to provide the user with;

an immediate alert identifying the media content segmented, the immediate alert including a portion of the metadata stored in the media storage platform, the immediate alert transmitted to the user in response to the metadata generated in real time while the media content segmented is being received and before an entire media clip is received by the content acquisition platform, the media clip determined to be of interest to the user based on the predetermined criteria matching information derived from processing the media content in real time, the immediate alert transmitted to a device of the user identified in a subset of a user contact list, the subset identifying devices selected by the user from devices in the user contact list to be used for notification purposes; and

a predictive alert identifying media content matching the user'"'"'s profile that will be broadcast from the source at a later time, the predictive alert transmitted to a device of the user identified in the subset of a user contact list, the subset identifying devices selected by the user from devices in the user contact list to be used for notification purposes; and

a content delivery platform to send the media content segmented to the device of the user.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the audio file is one of an MP3 file, an MPEG-2 file and a wave file.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the media processing platform includes an automatic speech recognition engine and the dialog approximation is derived from automatic speech recognition of the media content segmented.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the predetermined criteria are stored in an interest profile for the user.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the content delivery platform includes a content repurposing engine to format the media content segmented for display on the device.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the content repurposing engine is to format the media content segmented based on information stored in a device profile for the user.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the alert platform includes a gateway to handle protocol interfaces to the device.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the protocol interfaces include one of an electronic mail protocol interface, a hypertext transfer protocol interface, a pager protocol interface, a facsimile protocol interface, a short message service protocol interface, an instant messaging protocol interface, a multimedia messaging service protocol interface, an audio protocol interface, a text-to-speech protocol interface and a voice smart message language protocol interface.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the alert platform includes a server to perform one of device account verification and scheduling.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the immediate alert includes one of text, an image, audio information and video information.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the device is a mobile device.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

a tracking module to track a status of a transmitted alert, wherein the transmitted alert includes a unique identification for tracking.

13. A method of alerting users of receipt of media content, comprising:

receiving, at a media processing platform, media content including a video file and a related audio file of a broadcast television program broadcast without metadata and without closed captioning from a source;

storing the media content in a media storage platform;

generating metadata in real time based on the media content;

segmenting the media content based upon predetermined criteria defined by a user;

storing the metadata in an index in the media storage platform, corresponding to the media content segmented, the metadata including a dialog approximation based on speech recognition of the media content by the media processing platform, a topic boundary, and a scene boundary;

creating an immediate alert identifying the media content segmented, the immediate alert including a portion of the metadata stored in the media storage platform, the immediate alert created in response to determining that a media clip being received is of interest to the user based on the predetermined criteria matching the metadata generated in real time while the media content segmented is being received, the immediate alert for transmission to the user before the media clip is entirely received;

creating a predictive alert in response to determining that media content matching the user'"'"'s profile will be broadcast from the source at a later time; and

sending one of the immediate alert and the predictive alert to the user, the immediate alert transmitted to a device of the user identified in a subset of a user contact list, the subset identifying devices selected by the user from devices in the user contact list to be used for notification purposes, the predictive alert transmitted to a device of the user identified in the subset of a user contact list, the subset identifying devices selected by the user from devices in the user contact list to be used for notification purposes.

14. The method of claim 13 further comprising:

sending the media content segmented to a mobile device of the user.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the sending is performed in response to a request for the media content segmented from the user.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

converting the media content segmented into a form suitable for delivery to the mobile device.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the immediate alert is in a format being one of an electronic mail, a hypertext transfer protocol message, a pager message, a facsimile, a short message service message, an instant message, a multimedia messaging service message and a voice message.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein the predetermined criteria includes one of a keyword and a topic selected by the user.

19. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

deriving metadata from the media content segmented including analyzing a transcript of an audio portion of the media content, the metadata indicating that upcoming content will be of interest to the user.

20. A system, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory to store computer program instructions, the computer program instructions when executed on the processor cause the processor to perform operations comprising;

receiving media content including a video file and a related audio file of a broadcast television program broadcast without metadata and without closed captioning from a source;

storing the media content in a media storage platform;

generating metadata in real time based on the media content;

segmenting the media content based upon predetermined criteria defined by a user;

storing the metadata in an index in the media storage platform, corresponding to the media content segmented, the metadata including a dialog approximation based on speech recognition of the media content by the processor, a topic boundary, and a scene boundary;

creating an immediate alert identifying the media content segmented, the immediate alert including a portion of the metadata stored in the media storage platform, the immediate alert created in response to determining that a media clip being received is of interest to the user based on predetermined criteria matching the metadata generated in real time while the media content segmented is being received, the immediate alert for transmission to the user before the media clip is entirely received;

creating a predictive alert in response to determining that media content matching the user'"'"'s profile will be broadcast from the source at a later time; and

sending one of the immediate alert and the predictive alert to the user, the immediate alert transmitted to a device of the user identified in a subset of a user contact list, the subset identifying devices selected by the user from devices in the user contact list to be used for notification purposes, the predictive alert transmitted to a device of the user identified in the subset of a user contact list, the subset identifying devices selected by the user from devices in the user contact list to be used for notification purposes.