Media frame object visualization system

• US 7,657,845 B2
• Filed: 03/20/2006
• Issued: 02/02/2010
• 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.
• Primary Examiner(s): Luu; Sy D
• Application Number:
  US11/384,690
• Publication Number:
  US 20060161867A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,415 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 715/833
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/54 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/64 Browsing; Visualisation therefor generation of a list or set of audio data G06F16/638
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/68 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/743 a collection of video files or sequences
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/78 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 715/974 Slider control as on-screen object in operator interface

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 object visualization system comprising:

a processor;

a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, the memory having stored therein computer-executable instructions to implement the system, including;

a media object display area for at least one of browsing, clustering, filtering and sorting of a plurality of media objects; and

one or more bins that automatically attaches at least one annotation to a subset of the plurality of media objects upon placing the plurality of media objects in the one or more bins; and

an annotation component that employs artificial intelligence to automatically infer one or more attributes that the subset of the plurality of media objects have in common, wherein the one or more common attributes is not directly measurable from every media object of the subset of the plurality of media objects, the annotation component attaching the one or more common attributes as an annotation to each media object of the subset of the plurality of media objects.

2. The system of claim 1, the inferred one or more common attributes are extrapolated from metadata attached to each of the subset of the plurality of media objects.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the subset of the plurality of media objects are pictures and the inferred one or more attributes are relationships among individuals identified in the pictures.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the subset of the plurality of media objects are merged to form a movie.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the movie is an additional media object and the subset of the plurality of media objects remains intact as separate media objects.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more common attributes is an identifier of an individual, only portions of the subset of the plurality of media objects that include the individual are merged to form the movie.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the subset of the plurality of media objects includes at least one video object and at least one audio object.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the artificial intelligence is further employed to automatically correlate a video object to an audio object that is relevant to the video object, the annotation component plays the audio object in the background of the video object in the movie.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the inference is based upon at least one of pattern recognition, speech recognition, content analysis, or face detection.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one annotation only remains temporarily attached to the selected media objects for at least one of a user specified period of time or during the period of time a designated application is invoked by the user.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of media objects are maintained in an original form in a database and annotations are attached to a copy of each of the subset of the plurality of media objects.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the subset of the plurality of media objects are merged to form a slideshow.

13. The system of claim 1, the media object display area further comprising a visualization selector component that when selected switches a display of the plurality of media objects between a raster view and a stacked view, the raster view displays each media object in a two dimensional perspective, the stacked view displays groupings of media objects where the media objects in a grouping appear in a three-dimensional view in a stack.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein each bin is displayed with a count of media objects contained within each bin.

15. A method for media objects visualization, comprising:

employing a processor executing computer executable instructions embodied on a computer readable storage medium to perform the following acts;

displaying at least one bin;

displaying a plurality of media objects;

correlating a subset of the plurality of media objects upon placing the plurality of media objects in the at least one bin, wherein the correlating employs artificial intelligence to automatically extrapolate a common attribute that the subset of the plurality of media objects have in common, wherein the common attribute is not included in metadata associated with every media object of the subset of the plurality of media objects, and

annotating the common attribute to each media object of the subset of the plurality of media objects.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising merging the subset of media objects into at least one of a movie or slide show.

17. The method of claim 16, the common attribute is extrapolated based at least upon analysis of each of the plurality of media objects via at least one of pattern recognition, speech recognition, content analysis, or face detection.

18. The method of claim 15, displaying a grouping of the subset of the plurality of media objects.

19. The method of claim 15, the common attribute is an identifier of an individual that is identified in each of the subset of the plurality of media objects.