The present invention relates to a method and a device for managing metadata in electronic appliances. Especially the provided solution pertains to visual metadata management of media elements arranged into groups.
Due to the exponentially growing amount of electronically stored data in various electronic appliances such as computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, media recorders/playback devices, and shared (network) media directories, also requirements set for different media editing and managing tools have risen considerably during the last two decades. The traditional way of handling electronically stored data, e.g. in binary form, is to represent separate data elements textually by visualizing identifiers thereof on a computer display and respectively, to receive editing etc commands targeted to a number of data elements via a computer keyboard on a command word basis.
Metadata is data about data. It may, for example, describe when and where a certain data element was created, what it is about, who created it, and what's the used data format. In other words, metadata gives supplementary means for a data element's further exploitation, being often optional but still very useful as will become apparent. To give a more specific example, an image file (˜image element) may contain metadata attributes about aperture value, shutter speed, flash type, location, event, people being photographed etc to properly insert the image into a suitable context. Some of these attributes could and should be defined automatically, since it is not realistic to assume that users would have the time and energy to manually annotate their content to a large extent.
Single data elements can often be painlessly edited and provided with metadata even by utilizing traditional textual input means but the situation changes radically in case of collections comprising a plurality of elements.
One could consider an example from the field of image collection(s) management as it certainly is one of the many applications in which the total number of elements (e.g. holiday photos) easily exceeds the limit considered as bearable for old-fashioned one-by-one editing other than sporadically, especially what comes to adding/modifying metadata attributes that often are numerous and somewhat detailed if meant to be of any good. Adobe Photoshop Album is one of the products that reflect the current state of the art in image collections management, see
Although the prior art solution described above certainly is applicable in a number of cases and typically prevails over mere textual editing-based methods, it is not an all-purpose ultimate solution. Performing drag-and-drop operations with hand-held device may be tedious, since performing this operation requires very controlled movement of the hand. E.g. the user is sitting in a bus and while s/he is performing the operation, the bus rides over a bump, and due to this, the operation is disturbed, it may cause unexpected effects. Yet another point is that when an extensive image collection should be annotated with metadata from scratch, even drag-and-drop or other classic multiple selection methods that work on visualized elements, e.g. modifier keys SHIFT or CONTROL pressed on a keyboard while selecting items in Microsoft Windows, may appear nothing but tedious. Using extra hardware modifier keys for performing multiple selections with hand-held devices may be challenging due to the small physical size of the device; the device may not have room for extra keys of this kind. Humans also have some natural ability to perceive (e.g. visually) complex compositions' essential, distinctive features directly without slavishly chopping them first into basic building blocks for performing perfectly exact machine-like classification, which is the approach computers usually have been programmed to follow, though it omits some human strengths.
The object of the present invention is to overcome the aforesaid problem of awkward manual editing/managing of visualized objects and related metadata in electronic appliances. The object is reached by applying metadata attributes with preferred values to data elements that are selected through e.g. painting-like, interconnecting gestures via the device UI such as a control pen, a joystick, a mouse, a touch pad/screen or another appropriate control accessory.
The utility of the invention arises from its inherent ability to provide intuitive and fast means for copying several metadata attribute values to a plurality of items. Compared to the methods provided by the prior art where the multiple item selection had to be done with e.g. modifier keys, the invention provides three major benefits: 1) less input required, 2) less hardware keys required, and 3) reduced risk of selecting/deselecting items accidentally e.g. due to a failure in pressing a multiple selection button upon (de)selecting a new element to the element set while navigating in content grid, which could empty all other elements from the set. In case of accidental (de)selection, also error recovery can be accomplished fluently.
According to the invention, a method for directing a metadata operation at a number of electronically stored data elements in an electronic device has the steps of
In another aspect of the invention, an electronic device comprises
The overall user-defined route may, in addition to one start and end point with a continuous portion between them, be considered to consist of several sub-routes between a plurality of start and end points, i.e. it is a multi-selection route.
The term “metadata operation” may incorporate, for example, setting one or multiple predefined metadata attributes and/or associated values for the specified elements, i.e. elements which were located within the route are associated with the metadata attribute or/and the attribute value; in computing systems the attributes normally carry at least initial or “no-specific-value-set” type preset values if no specific values have been allocated yet. However, other metadata related actions might also be directed based on the method as being evident from the teachings thereof.
In an embodiment of the invention a user equipped with the device of the invention is willing to annotate his electronic holiday photo album with various metadata attributes for easier utilization in the future. The user first selects one source image with preferred metadata attributes he would like to apply to other images respectively. Then he paints a route over some selected images that, thanks to the inventive method, also receive, i.e. they are copied, the metadata attributes and/or metadata attribute values of the source image. Different variations of this scheme are also presented hereinafter.
In the following, the invention is described in more detail by reference to the attached drawings, wherein
Referring to
If the user moves the cursor on top of pop-up note and presses “Use” button, the view is changed, please refer to
In
In
In phase 506 a cursor is visualized to the user for pointing and thus enabling determination of a preferred route over the visualized data elements. Cursor visualization, functioning and the overall appearance may be (pre-)defined on either an application or a system level, i.e. in modern computer devices the operating system often provides the application with at least basic cursor visualization and input data acquiring algorithms that may be then called by different applications for more specific purposes, e.g. carrying out the invention's cursor/route visualization and input data reception accordingly. Thus, differentiated cursor visualization and user response gathering routines are unnecessary to be implemented for separate applications in a device with pre-programmed basic routines. Anyhow, phase 506 shall be deemed optional in scenarios where e.g. touch screen or some other means not requiring a separate cursor to be first visualized are utilized.
In phase 508 the user determines, with or without the help of the optionally visualized cursor, a route that the executing device receives as control information, e.g. as coordinates, via its data input means such as a peripheral interface to which a mouse has been connected, or via a touch pad/screen. The information received by the device to form the necessary conception of the route as originally intended by the user shall cover a starting point, defined by e.g. mouse/joystick button press or finger/other pointing device press in case of a (pressure sensitive) touch pad/screen, an end point defined by another press or a release accordingly, and a list of route intermediate points, so-called checkpoints, to enable constructing a model with adequate resolution about the building of the desired path between the start and end points. Resolution is adequate when it is not left in uncertainty which of the data elements fell under the route and which not. As one option, touch pads/screens with optical sensors in addition to/instead of pressure sensors may be utilized in which case route definition is at least partly based on changing optical properties of the surface monitored by the sensor due to movement of a pointing device such as a pen or a finger on such surface. The intermediate points of the route are typically defined by the user based on control device, e.g. mouse or a finger in case of a touch screen, movement between said start and end points. The received control information then reflects the movement.
As illustrated in the figure with dotted lines as an exemplary option only, the execution of presented method steps can be either re-started from a desired previous phase or prematurely completely ended. The execution of the method can be continuous or, for example, intermittent and controlled by timed software interrupts etc. Therefore, e.g. phase 508 can be made a decision-making point wherein it is decided whether to continue method execution either from the following phase, to re-execute the current phase in case of no control information obtained, or to end method execution due to the fulfilment of some predetermined criterion, e.g. application shutdown instruction received from the user.
In phase 510 the route defined by the input control information is visualized to the user, via a free-form continuous or dotted line following the cursor movements, or through highlighting the data elements hitting the route, for example. Although the step as such is optional as route visualization is not a necessary task for directing a metadata action in accordance with the invention, it is highly recommended as the user may then quickly realize which data elements were actually addressed as targets for the metadata action compared to the originally intended ones.
Further, route visualization phase 510 can be made dependent on and be performed in connection with or after specification phase 512 where on the basis of the user-defined route the target elements for metadata operation are specified. This may happen by comparing the received route (point) coordinates with the positions of visualized data elements and by analyzing which of the elements fall in the route, for example. It should be evident that if only/also the target elements are to be visualized in contrast to mere route, for determination of which true knowledge about underlying elements is not necessary, specification phase 512 shall be already completed in order to be able to highlight the correct elements in the first place.
In phase 514 the metadata operation and related metadata, which should have been identified by now at the latest as described in the following paragraph, is finally performed and directed to the specified data elements. The operation can, for example, relate to associating a certain metadata attribute with the target data elements, associating a certain metadata attribute value with the target data elements, or even cancelling a recent attribute value change (provided that e.g. metadata attribute selection is not changed but element(s) already fallen in the previous route is now re-painted, or a specific “cancel change” button has been selected prior to determining the route). Phase 516 refers to the end or restart of the method execution.
In
In general, one option for carrying out initial actions 520, 522 in the spirit of
Although the examples have been put forward with images, the invention may be used with other data and media types.
In addition to data elements also application code 612, generally called a computer program, to carry out the method steps of the invention may be provided to the executing device on a separate carrier medium such as a memory card, a magnetic disk, a cd-rom, etc.
The scope of the invention is found in the following claims. Although a few more or less focused examples were given in the text about the invention's applicability and feasible implementation, purpose thereof was not to restrict the usage area of the actual fulcrum of the invention to any certain occasion, which should be evident to any rational reader. Meanwhile, the invention shall be considered as a novel and practical method for directing metadata operations to a number of data elements through data element visualization and exploitation of related control input.