LAZY EVALUATION OF SEMANTIC INDEXING

• US 20110137910A1
• Filed: 12/08/2009
• Published: 06/09/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/08/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Inventors: Wood, Mark D., Hibino, Stacie L.
• Granted Patent: US 9,009,163 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/741
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/51 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/583 using metadata automatically derived from the content

Abstract

A method for searching a database of digital media assets, comprising: designating a database of digital media assets, wherein the database of digital media assets has been indexed according to a set of general indexers; receiving a search query; defining specialized search conditions by identifying one or more elements of the search query corresponding to one or more specialized indexers; defining general search conditions by identifying elements of the search query corresponding to the general indexers; identifying a subset of the digital media assets by applying the general search conditions; indexing the subset of the digital media assets using the identified specialized indexers; and ranking the subset of the digital media assets by applying the specialized search conditions.

Claims

1. A method for searching a database of digital media assets, comprising using a processor to perform the steps of:

designating a database of digital media assets, wherein the database of digital media assets has been indexed according to a set of general indexers to determine general metadata for each of the digital media assets;

receiving a search query;

defining specialized search conditions by identifying one or more elements of the search query corresponding to one or more specialized indexers;

defining general search conditions by identifying elements of the search query corresponding to the general indexers;

identifying a subset of the digital media assets by applying the general search conditions to the general metadata;

indexing the subset of the digital media assets using the one or more identified specialized indexers to determine specialized metadata for each of the digital media assets in the subset of the digital media assets; and

ranking the subset of the digital media assets by applying the specialized search conditions to the specialized metadata.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of ranking the subset of the digital media assets further includes applying the general search conditions to the general metadata.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein an element of the search query may correspond to both one or more general indexers and one or more specialized indexers.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the specialized metadata is associated with the digital media assets and stored in the database of digital media assets.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the specialized metadata already exists for some portion of the subset of the digital media assets as a result of earlier searches and wherein the specialized indexers are only applied to those digital media assets not having the specialized metadata.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the search string is received from a user.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein general search conditions are identified from elements of the search query by using concept expansion.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein specialized search conditions are identified from elements of the search query by using concept expansion.

9. The method of claim 6 further including the step of presenting the most highly ranked set of digital media assets to the user.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the digital media assets are digital images and the digital media assets are presented to the user by displaying the digital images.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein the digital media assets are digital video files and the digital media assets are presented to the user by playing the digital video files.

12. The method of claim 9 wherein the digital media assets are digital audio files and the digital media assets are presented to the user by playing the digital audio files.

13. The method of claim 9 wherein the digital media assets are complex objects composed of a plurality of digital images, digital videos or digital audios.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the general metadata includes date/time metadata, event classification metadata, indoor/outdoor metadata, person detection metadata or geospatial metadata.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein the specialized metadata is a meronym of a generalized metadata term.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein one or more pieces of the general metadata or the specialized metadata are specified by probability values.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the probability values are used to rank the subset of the digital media assets.

18. The method of claim 1 further including querying a user to provide additional information to clarify the search query.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the user is asked to clarify ambiguous elements of the search query.

20. The method of claim 1 wherein the indexers included in the set of general indexers are modified over time in response to the frequency at which search queries are executed containing elements corresponding to particular indexers.

21. A system comprising:

a data processing system; and

a memory system communicatively connected to the data processing system and storing instructions configured to cause the data processing system to implement a method for searching a database of digital media assets, wherein the instructions comprise;

designating a database of digital media assets, wherein the database of digital media assets has been indexed according to a set of general indexers to determine general metadata for each of the digital media assets;

receiving a search query;

defining specialized search conditions by identifying one or more elements of the search query corresponding to one or more specialized indexers;

defining general search conditions by identifying elements of the search query corresponding to the general indexers;

identifying a subset of the digital media assets by applying the general search conditions to the general metadata;

indexing the subset of the digital media assets using the one or more identified specialized indexers to determine specialized metadata for each of the digital media assets in the subset of the digital media assets; and

ranking the subset of the digital media assets by applying the specialized search conditions to the specialized metadata.