Producing special effects to complement displayed video information

• US 10,051,239 B2
• Filed: 10/09/2007
• Issued: 08/14/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Stanford-Clark, Andrew James, Fletcher, Benjamin Joseph
• Primary Examiner(s): Chae, Kyu
• Application Number:
  US11/869,010
• Publication Number:
  US 20080276291A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,962 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/222 Secondary servers, e.g. proxy server, cable television Head-end provisioning of proxy services in data packet switching networks H04L67/56
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/26616 for merging a unicast channel into a multicast channel, e.g. in a VOD application, when a client served by unicast channel catches up a multicast channel to save bandwidth data multicast over packet-switching network H04L12/18
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2665 Gathering content from different sources, e.g. Internet and satellite
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2668 Creating a channel for a dedicated end-user group, e.g. insertion of targeted commercials based on end-user profiles information retrieval from the Internet by querying with filtering and personalisation G06F16/9535; arrangements for replacing or switching information during the broadcast H04H20/10; push services over packet-switching network H04L12/1859; adaptation of message content in packet-switching networks H04L51/063
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47208 for requesting near-video-on-demand content
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4722 for requesting additional data associated with the content
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8133 specifically related to the content, e.g. biography of the actors in a movie, detailed information about an article seen in a video program
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8453 by locking or enabling a set of features, e.g. optional functionalities in an executable program
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17354 in an intermediate station common to a plurality of user terminals

Abstract

A hierarchical publish/subscribe network is employed to produce and distribute special effects to users to complement displayed video information. A top level broker in the network receives a plurality of data streams corresponding to a respective plurality of primary special. A service provider makes a subscription request for one of said primary special effects and receives the corresponding selected data stream. The selected data stream is transformed into at least one further data stream, corresponding to a further special effect. The further data stream is published to a lower level broker associated with the service provider. In response to a user subscription request for the further special effect, the lower level broker publishes the further data stream to a user interface for presentation to the user in association with the displayed video information.

Claims

1. A method of providing subtitle or captioning data to viewers of a video program, the method comprising:

at a video source, storing video program content and corresponding text, transmitting the video program content to a viewer;

in addition to transmitting the video program content to a viewer, providing the corresponding text, comprising subtitles or captioning for the video program content, to a messaging client of a publish/subscribe system;

accessing the publish/subscribe system to publish the corresponding text by, with the messaging client, transmitting the corresponding text to a top level broker of the publish/subscribe system for distribution via the top level broker and at least one mid-level broker to a number of subscribers in the publish/subscribe system; and

,

with the at least one mid-level broker, accessing a service provider, where the mid-level broker transmits the corresponding text to the service provider and receives back a different version of the corresponding text from the service provider for distribution by the mid-level broker to a number of subscribers in the publish/subscribe system.