Rapid media group annotation

• US 7,904,797 B2
• Filed: 01/21/2003
• Issued: 03/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Glatzer, Asta L., Glenner, Steve, Wong, Curtis G., DeMar, Steven D., Drucker, Steven M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Queler; Adam M
• Application Number:
  US10/348,158
• Publication Number:
  US 20040172593A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,968 Days
• Field of Search: 715/512, 715/515, 715/526, 715/530, 715/716, 715/811, 715/200, 715/204
• US Class Current: 715/200
• 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 embodied on a computer readable storage medium with computer-executable instructions for implementing components, the system comprising:

a bin component that facilitates selecting and grouping a plurality of media objects, the bin component configured to create a first virtual container and a second virtual container configured to hold the media objects;

an annotation component configured to annotate the plurality of media objects with at least a first metadata when the plurality of media objects is moved into the first virtual container; and

an artificial intelligence component configured to generate a second metadata for annotation to the plurality of media objects based at least in part upon previous user-based instructions, the artificial intelligence component further configured to assign a priority rating to at least one metadata based upon at least one of user defined preferences, a cost-benefit analysis, or a utility analysis,

the annotation component further configured to annotate the plurality of media objects with at least the second metadata when the plurality of media objects is moved from the first virtual container into the second virtual container, a first subset of the plurality of media objects being annotated with the first metadata and the second metadata based on the previous user-based instructions and a second subset of the plurality of media objects being annotated with the second metadata and not annotated with the first metadata based on the previous user-based instructions.

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 at least one of a pattern recognition component, an audio recognition component, or a data fusion component.

6. 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.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the analysis comprises at least one of face detection, content analysis, intrinsic metadata comparison, or pen-ink recognition.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the priority rating is further based on a probabilistic based analysis or statistical-based analysis.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein media objects are grouped based at least upon the priority rating.

10. 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, or slides, or any combination thereof, or any portion thereof.

11. 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.

12. The system of claim 1, further comprising a display bin that facilitates annotating media objects with metadata based at least upon a user selecting a plurality of media objects and placing the media objects in the bin.

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 or 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, or 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.

30. A computer implemented method of annotating media objects, the method operable on a computer processor, the method comprising:

creating, by the processor, a first virtual container and a second virtual container configured to hold the media objects;

assigning first metadata to the first virtual container;

selecting a plurality of media objects and moving the plurality of media objects into the first virtual container;

annotating, by the processor, the plurality of media objects with the first metadata en masse, based on the first virtual container;

generating second metadata for annotation to the plurality of media objects based at least in part upon an analysis of previous user-based instructions via an artificial intelligence component;

assigning the second metadata to the second virtual container;

moving a first portion of the plurality of media objects from the first virtual container into the second virtual container and annotating the first portion of the plurality of media objects with the second metadata, the first portion of the plurality of media objects being annotated with the first and second metadata based on the previous user-based instructions; and

moving a second portion of the plurality of media objects from the first virtual container into the second virtual container and annotating the second portion of the plurality of media objects with the second metadata, the second portion of the plurality of media objects being annotated with the second metadata and not annotated with the first metadata based on the previous user-based instructions.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising generating the second metadata based on at least one of content, length, creation date, last modified date, visual and audio patterns, or 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, or snippets, and any combination thereof of at least one of movies, videos, songs, music, text, documents, pictures, photographs, emails, and streaming video, or 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 therewith.

41. A computer readable medium storage device having stored thereon the system of claim 30.

42. A media annotation system, embodied on a computer readable storage medium, comprising:

means for selecting and grouping a plurality of media objects into at least a first group and a second group;

means for annotating the plurality of media objects with at least a first metadata based at least in part on grouping the plurality of media objects into the first group,

means for generating at least a second metadata for annotation to the plurality of media objects based at least in part upon an analysis of previous user-based instructions by an artificial intelligence component; and

means for annotating the plurality of media objects with at least the second metadata based at least in part on regrouping the plurality of media objects from the first group into the second group, wherein a first subset of the plurality of media objects is annotated with the first metadata and the second metadata based on the previous user-based instructions and a second subset of the plurality of media objects is annotated with the second metadata and not annotated with the first metadata based on the previous user-based instructions.