Patent Application
20090177965
Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of presenting media content, and, more particularly, to automatic manipulation of conflicting media presentations.
As more and more information becomes digital and accessible, users are encountering situations where multiple streams of data are presented to them at once. This can often happen inadvertently or by choice. For example, a user that is listening to music and browsing through web pages can suddenly have another audio stream start playing at the same time as their music. These overlapping audio feeds require the user to manually intervene and take action to choose the data source which meets the user's priorities. This action can involve manually pausing the music or stopping an embedded audio stream to continue listening to music.
Embodiments include a method that automatically resolves conflicts between presentations of media contents of a same type. The method comprises detecting an event that corresponds to the presenting of a first media content on a device. It is determined if a second media content of the same type as the first media content is currently playing on the device. Information about the first media content and the second media content are determined. A first priority value for the first media content is determined based, at least in part, on the information about the first media content. A second priority value for the second media content is determined based, at least in part, on the information about the second media content. Presentation of one or both of the first and second media contents is manipulated based, at least in part, on the first and second priority values.
The present embodiments may be better understood, and numerous objects, features, and advantages made apparent to those skilled in the art by referencing the accompanying drawings.
The description that follows includes exemplary systems, methods, techniques, instruction sequences and computer program products that embody techniques of the present inventive subject matter. However, it is understood that the described embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. For instance, although examples refer to media within web browsers being manipulated, various embedded and standalone media content players can be manipulated. In other instances, well-known instruction instances, protocols, structures and techniques have not been shown in detail in order not to obfuscate the description.
Automatically manipulating presentation of two or more conflicting media contents can prevent intrusive or interruptive presentation of media content. A user can be freed of manually manipulating presentation of media content. The media content is prioritized based on one or more factors, such as predefined user input, location information, metadata about the media content, etc. Subsequently, presentation of the media content is manipulated in accordance with the prioritizing.
To present the net meeting, the browser 104 generates an event into the operating system space 101. The event indicates that the browser 104 is attempting to present a video, which includes images and audio. In the operating system space 101, a media presentation conflict resolution unit 115 handles the conflicting presentations of audio. The media presentation conflict resolution unit 115 includes a monitoring module 116, a prioritization module 118, and a manipulation module 122. The monitoring module 116 detects the event generated by the browser 104. After detecting the event, the monitoring module 116 detects a conflict between the music player 106 and the browser 104 because both are attempting to concurrently present audio content. The monitoring module passes data identifying the music player 106, the browser 104, the music file 108, and the net meeting video to a prioritization module 118. For example, the monitoring module 116 determines process identifiers for the music player 106 and the browser 104, as well as references or identifiers for the music file 108 and the video to be presented in the browser 104.
The prioritization module 118 determines information about the music file 108 and the audio content of the video. For instance, the prioritization module 118 examines metadata of the music file 108 and the video. Additionally, the prioritization module 118 can determine information about the music file 108 and the audio content of the video with extraction analysis of the music file 108 and the video. The prioritization module 118 determines priority values based on the determined information about the music file 108 and audio portion of the video, and reading data in a media preference structure 120. The priority values, in this example, are weights associated with various attributes and/or characteristics of the media content as determined from the information. For instance, the prioritization 118 reads metadata for the music file 108 that indicates the music file as music and metadata for the video that indicates the video as a meeting. The media preference structure 120, for example, indicates that a user prefers listening to a meeting over music. The media preference structure 120 represents this preference with a greater weight for media content for a meeting than media content for music. As another example, two competing media contents may both be news audio. Metadata for one news audio stream indicates that the audio stream is financial news and the other audio stream is entertainment news. The media preference structure 120 can indicate that entertainment news has a lower priority value (e.g., weight) than financial news. In another embodiment, priority values may be aggregated. In an example, the media preference structure 120 indicates same priority values for news audio content, but different weights for entertainment media content and finance related media content. The prioritization module 118 reads out the multiple weights and aggregates the weights for each of the audio streams. The prioritization module 118 passes the priority values to a manipulation module 122.
Embodiments can populate the media preference structure 120 with various techniques. For instance, a user, via a graphical user interface, can select a type of media content from a list, and then select certain attributes or characteristics (e.g. work related, educational, financial news, entertainment news, etc.) of the selected type of media content. The selected values may implicit indicate a preference. A user can also assign different values to represent different degrees of preference. For example, a user may select qualifiers (e.g., highly preferred, least preferred, etc.), numerical values, etc.
The media preference structure 120 (or another structure) can also store information about the device that affects the priority values. A system administrator, boot script, etc. configure a device to give reset or modify the priority values to give preference to work related media content over non-work related media content when the device is connected to a work group, a network in a list of networks, etc. Embodiments can configure a device to set or augment priority values to give preference to media content related to legal issues over all other issues.
The manipulation module 122 selects which presentation to interrupt or prevent based on the priority values received from the prioritization module 118. In this example, the manipulation module 122 selects to pause the music player 106 and allow the browser 104 to present the net meeting based on the prioritization values of the media contents. The manipulation module 122 generates a message (e.g., an event or command) that causes the music player 106 to pause the playing of the music file 108.
The user space 100 now displays a paused music player 106. The music file 108 is paused, as indicated by a pause symbol 110. Additionally, the browser 104 has been moved in front of the paused music player 106 to represent activation of the browser 104 or focusing on the browser 104.
Although the above example depicts three modules within the media presentation conflict unit 115, embodiments can realize the functionality for handling conflicts between media content presentation differently. For example, functionality implemented by the modules 116, 118, and 122 can be implemented as three distinct threads or processes that communicate in accordance with inter-process communication techniques of the operating system. As another example, the functionality for automatically resolving conflicts between media content presentations may be a single process or thread. In addition, the functionality may be wholly or partially realized in the background, although not necessarily within operating system space.
At block 205, information about the first and the second media content is determined. For instance, the media contents are analyzed to determine attributes and/or characteristics about the media contents. As another example, the media contents may have metadata that can be read to determine attributes and/or characteristics about the media contents. At block 206, a first priority value for the first media content is determined based on the information about the first media content. At block 208, a second priority value for the second media content is determined based on the information about the second media content. For example, a set of user defined or historically learned priorities and/or preferences are retrieved. To illustrate, it may be learned that the user prefers to mute or push to the background media content characterized as work related and allow presentation of content characterized as entertainment related. As another example, a user can configure via a graphical user interface, for example, a device to give priority to flash media content from a particular website over all other media content. At block 210, it is determined if the first priority value is greater than the second priority value. If the first priority value is greater than the second priority value, then control flows to block 214. If the first priority value is not greater than the second priority value, then control flows to block 212.
At block 212, presentation of the first media content is prevented and presentation of the second media content is continued. For example, the volume of the first media content can be muted or decreased. As another example, the presentation of the first media content can be put into the background. From block 212, control ends.
At block 214, presentation of the second media content is interrupted and presentation of the first media content is allowed. Examples of interruption include muting the volume of the media content, stopping or pausing the media content, decreasing speed of a sequence of images, minimizing a window, etc. From block 214, control ends.
As described above, a tracking structure can be maintained that indicates media content being presented to detect conflicts. If the currently selected media content is to be interrupted, then the corresponding entry may be removed or tagged with a value that indicates the media content and/or the process presenting the media content has been interrupted.
It should be understood that the example operations depicted in
The monitoring unit 304 is operable to detect a media related event and to identify a process or application that generates the event. Examples of processes or applications that present media content include standalone media players, embedded media players, applets, etc. Additionally, the process can correspond to embedded or separate media players (e.g. web browser player, mp3 player, etc.).
The prioritization unit 308 operates to gather information about the media content and about the environment of the media content. The prioritization unit 308 then uses the information to determine the priority values. As previously mentioned, a set of user defined configurations or historically learned preferences are read. Examples of user defined configurations or learned preferences include a preference to hear news updates versus musical selections, viewing educational content over personal content, etc. Further, the prioritization unit 308 can examine settings in the device to determine information about the device and/or environment (e.g., attached peripherals, location, resource availability, remaining data usage for a mobile phone, etc.).
The manipulation unit 310 operates to select the media content to manipulate based on the prioritization of the media contents by the prioritization unit 308. The manipulation unit 310 can send a message or command to cause increasing, decreasing, or muting of volume, stopping or pausing a presentation, a presentation to no longer be active, increasing or decreasing speed of a presentation, etc.
Although not shown in
The described embodiments may be provided as a computer program product, or software, that may include a machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions, which may be used to program a computer system (or other electronic device(s)) to perform a process according to embodiments, whether presently described or not, since every conceivable variation is not enumerated herein. A machine readable medium includes any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form (e.g., software, processing application) readable by a machine (e.g., a computer). The machine-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, magnetic storage medium (e.g., floppy diskette); optical storage medium (e.g., CD-ROM); magneto-optical storage medium; read only memory (ROM); random access memory (RAM); erasable programmable memory (e.g., EPROM and EEPROM); flash memory; or other types of medium suitable for storing electronic instructions. In addition, embodiments may be embodied in an electrical, optical, acoustical or other form of propagated signal (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.), or wireline, wireless, or other communications medium.
While the embodiments are described with reference to various implementations and exploitations, it will be understood that these embodiments are illustrative and that the scope of the inventive subject matter is not limited to them. In general, techniques for media presentation conflict resolution as described herein may be implemented with facilities consistent with any hardware system or hardware systems. Many variations, modifications, additions, and improvements are possible.
Plural instances may be provided for components, operations or structures described herein as a single instance. Finally, boundaries between various components, operations and data stores are somewhat arbitrary, and particular operations are illustrated in the context of specific illustrative configurations. Other allocations of functionality are envisioned and may fall within the scope of the inventive subject matter. In general, structures and functionality presented as separate components in the exemplary configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or component. Similarly, structures and functionality presented as a single component may be implemented as separate components. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements may fall within the scope of the inventive subject matter.
