Metadata editing apparatus, metadata reproduction apparatus, metadata delivery apparatus, metadata search apparatus, metadata re-generation condition setting apparatus, metadata delivery method and hint information description method

• US 7,826,709 B2
• Filed: 03/20/2003
• Issued: 11/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/12/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Inventors: Yamada, Yoshihisa, Nishikawa, Hirofumi, Asai, Kohtaro, Otoi, Kenji, Sekiguchi, Shunichi, Kuroda, Shinichi, Moriya, Yoshimi, Ogawa, Fuminobu
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran; Thai
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hasan; Syed Y
• Application Number:
  US10/510,548
• Publication Number:
  US 20050149557A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,784 Days
• Field of Search: 707/104.1, 707/1, 707/E17.009, 707/E17.028, 707/E17.029, 348/E5.002, 348/E5.007, 348/E5.008, 375/E7.007, 375/E7.024, 386/E5.001, 715/201, 715/204, 715/255, 725/51, G9B/27.051, 382/305
• US Class Current: 715/202
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/71 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• 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 16/785 using colour or luminescence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/786 using motion, e.g. object motion or camera motion
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/80 of semi-structured data, e.g. markup language structured data such as SGML, XML or HTML content-based retrieval of web data G06F16/95
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/40 in video content extracting overlay text G06V20/62; video retrieval G06F16/70; processing of video elementary streams in video servers H04N21/234; processing of video elementary streams in video clients H04N21/44
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/28 by using information signals recorded by the same method as the main recording G11B27/22 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/34 Indicating arrangements indicating means incorporated in magazine or cassette G11B23/046 and G11B23/0875; indicating measured values in general G01D
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234336 by media transcoding, e.g. video is transformed into a slideshow of still pictures or audio is converted into text
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/234363 by altering the spatial resolution, e.g. for clients with a lower screen resolution
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/235 Processing of additional data, e.g. scrambling of additional data or processing content descriptors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4668 for recommending content, e.g. movies
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8405 represented by keywords
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8543 using a description language, e.g. Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group [MHEG], eXtensible Markup Language [XML] information retrieval of semistructured data, the underlying structure being taken into account, e.g. mark-up language structure data G06F16/80

Abstract

Multimedia content containing moving pictures and audio is divided into multiple scenes and metadata is generated for each of the scenes obtained as a result of the division. It is possible to generate metadata containing scene structure information metadata that describes the hierarchical structure of the content in addition to scene section information and titles. Also, a name or an identifier of each descriptor contained in the metadata is described as hint information for manipulation of metadata composed of at least one descriptor describing semantic content, a structure, and characteristics of content.

Claims

1. A metadata editing apparatus comprising:

a scene division unit for dividing multimedia content containing at least one of moving pictures and audio into a plurality of scenes to generate scene section information metadata indicating a scene start position and a scene end position for each scene obtained as a result of the division;

a thumbnail image generation unit for extracting a representative frame of each scene as a thumbnail image based on corresponding scene section information metadata sent from the scene division unit and generating thumbnail image information metadata describing position of the thumbnail image in the multimedia content;

a scene description edit unit for performing hierarchical editing of each scene of the multimedia content based on the scene section information metadata sent from the scene division unit and generating scene structure information metadata describing a hierarchical structure of the multimedia content; and

a metadata description unit for integrating the scene section information metadata thumbnail image information metadata, and the scene structure information metadata and generating metadata describing contents and a structure of the multimedia content in accordance with a predetermined format.

2. A metadata editing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a characteristic extraction unit for extracting visual characteristic amounts of each scene of the multimedia content based on the scene section information metadata sent from the scene division unit and generating characteristic description metadata,

wherein the metadata description unit integrates the scene section information metadata, the scene structure information metadata, and the characteristic description metadata and generates the metadata describing the contents and the structure of the multimedia content in accordance with the predetermined format.