Rapid media group annotation

• US 20040172593A1
• Filed: 01/21/2003
• Published: 09/02/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Glatzer, Asta L., Glenner, Steve, Wong, Curtis G., Drucker, Steven M., DeMar, Steven D.
• Granted Patent: US 7,904,797 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/512
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/40 of multimedia data, e.g. slideshows comprising image and additional audio data retrieval of still image data G06F16/50; retrieval of audio data G06F16/60; retrieval of video data G06F16/70
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

The present invention provides a unique system and method for facilitating browsing, sorting, clustering, and filtering any number of media objects grouped together in a quick and easy manner. In particular, the invention involves annotating the media objects, which have been clustered, sorted, and/or filtered en masse rather than individually, with metadata. The media objects may be selected by a user and annotated with a plurality of metadata as desired by a user in order to optimize utilization of the media objects. The media objects may also be combined and/or mixed in any number of ways to create new media objects. Media objects may include an audio component, a visual component, a portion thereof, and/or any combination thereof.

Claims

1. A media annotation system comprising:

a component that facilitates selecting and grouping a plurality of media objects; and

a component that annotates the selected plurality of media objects with at least a subset of metadata.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising a metadata generation component that generates new metadata based at least in part upon the grouping of the media objects.

3. The system of claim 2, the metadata generation component comprising an analyzing component that identifies properties respectively associated with the media objects.

4. The system of claim 3, the analyzing component comprising a classifier.

5. The system of claim 3, the analyzing component comprising a pattern recognition component.

6. The system of claim 3, the analyzing component comprising an audio recognition component.

7. The system of claim 3, the analyzing component comprising a data fusion component.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the media objects comprise at least one of a picture, a photograph, music, sounds, text, e-mail message, a movie, a video recording, streaming video, a video still, documents, and/or slides, and/or any combination thereof, and/or any portion thereof.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a user selection component that receives the selected plurality of media objects based at least in part upon a user'"'"'s instructions.

10. The system of claim 2, wherein the generation component generates new metadata based at least in part upon the grouping of the media objects by analyzing the media objects for at least one characteristic common among them.

11. The system of claim 2, wherein the analysis comprises at least one of face detection, content analysis, intrinsic metadata comparison, and pen-ink recognition.

12. The system of claim 1, further comprising an artificial intelligence component that facilitates annotating media objects with metadata and generating new metadata for annotation to the media object based at least in part upon previous user-based instructions.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of media objects are annotated with a plurality of metadata.

14. The system of claim 1 further comprising a selection component that provides for a user to select a subset of a plurality of the objects that are displayed via selecting a first object and sweeping over other objects intended to fall within the subset.

15. The system of claim 14, the selection component working in conjunction with a mouse pointer.

16. The system of claim 14 further comprising a collection component that provides for grouping the selected objects.

17. The system of claim 16, the grouping being effected via a keystroke instruction.

18. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or more category filters that annotate media objects selected and assigned to the one or more category filters with metadata associated with the respective category filters.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the category filters facilitate the focusing of media objects while browsing the plurality of media objects available for view to a user.

20. The system of claim 18, further comprising a category filter label associated with the respective category filter that generally identifies the media objects included therein.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the category filter label is metadata that is annotated to the media objects which are included in the respective category filter.

22. The system of claim 18, wherein the category filters comprise respective sub-category filters, thereby creating a hierarchal arrangement of media objects and metadata annotated thereto.

23. The system of claim 1, further comprising a time-based selection component that highlights media objects for subsequent selection which are related by at least one of intrinsic and extrinsic time-related metadata.

24. The system of claim 1, further comprising command keys to optimize browsing, clustering, and sorting in order to facilitate rapid annotation of media objects, the command keys comprising at least one of a filter command, a select command, an unselect command, an inverse command, and a show-all command.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein the select command selects any highlighted media objects, the unselect command removes any highlighting of the media objects, and the inverse command simultaneously highlights the media objects not already highlighted and removes the highlighting of the already highlighted media objects.

26. The system of claim 1 further comprising a metadata historical component that records current annotated metadata and previous metadata annotated to the respective media objects and prioritizes at least the current metadata.

27. The system of claim 1 further comprising a media display component that facilitates focusing a larger grouping of the media objects to a smaller grouping of media objects.

28. The system of claim 1, further comprising a visualized database, the database storing the plurality of media objects such that the media objects are randomly viewable by a user in order to facilitate random access, browsing, clustering, and sorting of the media objects to facilitate rapid annotation thereof.

29. The system of claim 1, further comprising a component that generates a new media object from at least two media objects based at least in part upon metadata associated therewith.

42. A computer readable medium having stored thereon the system of claim 1.

30. A method of annotating media objects comprising:

selecting a plurality of media objects; and

annotating the media objects with metadata en masse.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising generating metadata based on at least one of content, length, creation date, last modified date, visual and audio patterns and sequences of the selected media objects.

32. The method of claim 30, further comprising removing at least one of the annotated metadata based at least in part by a user'"'"'s instructions.

33. The method of claim 30, further comprising generating new metadata and annotating the selected media objects such that a plurality of metadata are annotated to the selected media objects.

34. The method of claim 30, wherein the media objects comprise portions, cliplets, snippets, and any combination thereof of at least one of movies, videos, songs, music, text, documents, pictures, photographs, emails, and streaming video, and any combination thereof.

35. The method of claim 30, wherein the media objects are visually and randomly selected from a database of media objects that are quickly and easily viewable by a user.

36. The method of claim 35, wherein the media objects maintained in the database are not permanently modified by annotating the media objects with metadata.

37. The method of claim 35, wherein the media objects in the database are at least one of images of the actual media objects or images representing the actual media objects.

38. The method of claim 35, wherein the selected media objects are annotated with at least one metadata based at least in part upon a user'"'"'s instructions.

39. The method of claim 35, further comprising identifying at least a second media object related to at least a first media object, which is annotated with a desired metadata, for subsequent annotation with the desired metadata.

40. The method of claim 30, further comprising generating a new media object by combining at least two media objects based at least in part upon metadata associated therewith.

41. A data packet adapted to be transmitted between two or more computer processes facilitating rapid annotation of media objects, the data packet comprising:

information associated with a grouping of selected media objects, the grouping being based at least in part upon metadata associated with the media objects.

43. A media annotation system comprising:

means for selecting and grouping a plurality of media objects; and

means for annotating the selected plurality of media objects with at least a subset of metadata.