Patent Application
20080229205
1 This application claims priority from Korean Patent Application No. 10-2007-0024319 filed on Mar. 13, 2007 in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to content searching, and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus allowing a user to access an arbitrary part of content using metadata provided by multiple users other than the user accessing the content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Over the past few years there has been a rapid proliferation of Internet Protocol Televisions (IP TVs). IP TV is a service in which a variety of information, moving image content, broadcasting services, and so on are provided through a television receiver over ultrahigh-speed Internet. IPTV, which incorporates both Internet and television (TV) services, is a type of digital convergence. However, IPTV is different from a conventional Internet TV in that a television receiver, rather than a computer monitor, is used and a remote control, rather than a mouse, is used. IPTV service can be utilized simply by connecting a television receiver, a set-top box, and an Internet channel. That is, a user has only to connect a set-top box or an exclusive modem to a television receiver, and to then apply power to turn on the television receiver, thereby initiating the IPTV service. Accordingly, even an inexperienced computer user is able to easily use Internet searching and a variety of content and interactive services such as movie viewing, music listening, home shopping, home banking, online gaming, and so on, simply using a remote controller.
In view of the ability to render broadcast content as well as video and audio, the IPTV service is substantially similar to general cable and satellite services. In contrast to standard distribution, cable broadcasting, and satellite broadcasting, one of the prominent features of IPTV is interactivity, thereby enabling users to selectively view only a desired program at a convenient time. The control or initiative in TV broadcasting is being transferred from broadcasting companies or providers to viewers. Currently, IPTV service is provided in many countries, including Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, and so on. However, IPTV is still in the seeding stage. In Korea, communication operators are taking advantage of existing infrastructures to offer users IPTV service.
In currently available IPTV services, users have to search for and view particular content using limited information, such as movie titles, thumbnail images, and the like. In addition, a user must employ a separate editor tool to extract parts from the content, such as where an actor (or actress) appears, which is burdensome. In conventional IPTV services, searching for content using only limited information may present several problems; the needs of users may not be satisfied, and the interactivity of IPTV may not be fully utilized.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide interactivity between users as well as interactivity between existing IPTV service providers and users.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus allowing a user to access an arbitrary segment of digital broadcasting content using metadata provided by multiple users other than the user accessing the content.
The above and other objects of the present invention will be described in or be apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a terminal device including a playback unit decoding an input video stream and reconstructing a video image, a display unit displaying the reconstructed video image, a user interface allowing a user to select a segment that is part of the reconstructed video image and receiving metadata regarding the selected segment, a metadata generator generating the received metadata in a structured document, and a network interface transmitting the generated structured document to a predetermined first server.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a metadata management server including a network interface receiving metadata from a plurality of terminals regarding a segment that is part of a video image, a metadata processor sorting only valid metadata from the received metadata based on statistical information obtained from the plurality of terminals, a metadata storage unit storing the sorted metadata, and a search unit searching for the segment matching the keywords received from a first terminal and providing valid metadata regarding the searched segment to the first terminal.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of providing metadata regarding part of a video image, the method including decoding an input video stream and reconstructing a video image, displaying the reconstructed video image, allowing a user to select a segment that is the part of the reconstructed video image and receiving metadata regarding the selected segment, generating the received metadata in a structured document, and transmitting the generated structured document to a predetermined first server.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for managing metadata including receiving metadata from a plurality of terminals regarding a segment that is part of a video image, sorting only valid metadata from the received metadata based on statistical information obtained from the plurality of terminals, storing the sorted metadata, and searching for the segment matching the keywords received from a first terminal and providing valid metadata regarding the searched segment to the first terminal.
The above and other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent by describing in detail preferred embodiments thereof with reference to the attached drawings in which:
Advantages and features of the present invention and methods of accomplishing the same may be understood more readily by reference to the following detailed description of preferred embodiments and the accompanying drawings. The present invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete and will fully convey the concept of the invention to those skilled in the art, and the present invention will only be defined by the appended claims. Like reference numerals refer to like elements throughout the specification.
The embodiments are described below to explain the present invention by referring to the figures.
The present invention proposes a technique of allowing users to upload user-defined metadata (video tags or bookmarks) while viewing broadcast content and allowing other users to efficiently search for broadcast content using the uploaded metadata. In such a manner, multiple users can easily access particular broadcast content or a segment of the broadcast content in a more convenient way. In particular, a user can easily move to a desired scene in the broadcast content, e.g., a scene where a favorite character appears or a scene recommended by other users.
A network 50 has a content server 100, a metadata management server 200, and a plurality of terminals 300a and 300b connected thereto. The network 50 may be either the Internet or an intranet, and may be either a wired network or a wireless network.
The content server 100 delivers encoded content, e.g., a video stream encoded by a standard codec such as MPEG-4 or H.264 to terminals 300a and 300b. The terminals 300a and 300b receive the video stream, decode the received video stream, and display the user's desired video content.
Here, while viewing the video content, users of the terminals 300a and 300b select part of the video content (to be referred to as a “segment” hereinafter) and enter metadata regarding the segment. The metadata means information data regarding the segment entered in a tag form.
The entered metadata is automatically transmitted to the metadata management server 200. Then, the metadata management server 200 collects the metadata and sorts some of the collected metadata. Thereafter, upon a search request from the first terminal 300a, the metadata management server 200 provides metadata matching a keyword included in the search request to the first terminal 300a.
If the first terminal 300a selects a particular segment using the provided metadata, the content server 100 provides the first terminal 300a with the segment through a streaming service. Then, the first terminal 300a decodes the provided segment and displays the decoded segment for a user's viewing.
The control unit 310 is connected to other constituent elements of the terminal device 300 through a communication bus, and controls operations of the constituent elements. The control unit 310 may be called a central processing unit (CPU), a microprocessor, or a microcomputer.
The network interface 360 communicates with the metadata management server 200 or the content server 100 through the network 50. The network interface 360 sends a search request to the metadata management server 200, receives a response to the search request from the metadata management server 200, and receives a video stream from the content server 100.
The network interface 360 may be a wired interface under the Ethernet standard, an IEEE 802.11 wireless interface, or other various interfaces known in the art.
The playback unit 320 decodes the video stream provided from the content server 100 and received through the network interface 360. The decoding process may include a video-reconstruction process based on standards such as MPEG-4, H.264, and the like.
The display unit 330 displays the video image that is decoded by the playback unit 320 and reconstructed for viewing. To this end, the display unit 330 may include a video processor for converting the reconstructed video image using the NTSC (National Television System Committee method) or PAL (phase alternation line system) standard, a display device for displaying the converted video image, such as a PDP (Plasma Display Panel), an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), a DMD (Digital Micromirror Device), or the like.
The user interface 380 is an interface that allows a user to issue commands to the terminal device 300. In order to receive the commands from the user, the user interface 380 can be implemented as various types of devices, e.g., an IR (infra-red) receiver receiving signals from a remote controller, a voice recognizer recognizing a user's voice, a keyboard interface, a mouse interface, or the like. The display unit 330 displays a screen for inputting a user's command and processing the results of the user's command.
While the playback unit 320 plays back a particular video stream, the user may select a segment of the video stream through the user interface 380 to enter metadata regarding the segment.
The user may select a segment by directly entering numeric values representing a start position (a start time or a start frame number) and an end position (an end time or an end frame number). Alternatively, the user may select a segment simply by pressing a selection button twice while playing back content.
Based on the metadata input by the user, the metadata generator 350 generates a structured document in, e.g., XML (Extensible Markup Language), or HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language) format.
In detail, <Video_ID> is a tag for recording a content title or content ID, and <User_ID> is a tag for recording a user ID. <Tag_Start> and <Tag_End> are tags for recording a start frame number and an end frame number of a current segment, respectively. <Tag_Title> and <Tag_Detail> are tags for recording a segment title and a segment description, which are input by the user.
Eventually, the metadata generator 350 generates the structured document shown in
The terminal device 300 provides the metadata management server 200 with the metadata regarding the segment, sends keywords input by the users of the terminal device 300 to the metadata management server 200, and receives search results. As described above, users can read metadata entered by other users and can selectively view a desired segment through the search results received in such a manner.
To this end, the search request unit 370 receives keywords input by the user through the user interface 380, sends the keywords to the metadata management server 200 through the network interface 360, and receives the search results from the metadata management server 200 through the network interface 360. The search results will later be described in more detail with reference to
The metadata management server 200 may include a control unit 210, a metadata storage unit 220, a search unit 230, a network interface 240 and a metadata processor 250.
The control unit 210 is connected to other constituent elements of the metadata management server 200 through a communication bus and controls the operations of the constituent elements.
The network interface 240 communicates with the terminal device 300 or the content server 100 through the network 50. In particular, the network interface 240 receives a search request from the terminal device 300 and sends the search result to the terminal device 300.
The metadata storage unit 220 receives structured documents generated based on the metadata from a plurality of terminals through the network interface 240, and collects and stores the metadata contained in the structured documents. The metadata storage unit 220 may be implemented as a nonvolatile memory device such as ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM; a flash memory unit; a volatile memory device such as RAM; a storage medium such as a hard disk or an optical disk; or any other known storage medium.
The metadata processor 250 sorts the metadata stored in the metadata storage unit 220, and deletes invalid metadata from the metadata storage unit 220.
Since the users of the terminal device 300 freely enter the segment title and segment description, they may inadvertently enter the segment title and segment description incorrectly. In some cases, inappropriate terms may be contained in the segment title and segment description so that they cannot be shared with the public. Accordingly, it is necessary to sort the metadata provided from the plurality of terminals prior to collecting the metadata. The sorting process may be done manually by a manager of the metadata management server 200. However, it is impractical to manually sort large amounts of metadata provided from the plurality of terminals.
Thus, it is required that the users of the terminals themselves participate in the sorting process. For example, users viewing a segment using particular metadata are made to participate in rating the metadata. The metadata processor 200 may select only the metadata exceeding predetermined criteria as valid metadata, based on statistical information evaluated by many users, including rating marks, view counts, recommendation counts, and so on. As another example, metadata reported by more than a constant number of users may be selected as invalid metadata, and the remaining metadata may be selected as valid metadata. Thereafter, the metadata processor 250 deletes the invalid metadata from the metadata storage unit 220.
The search unit 230 searches for a search result matching the metadata stored in the metadata storage unit 220 using the keywords provided from the terminal device 300. The search unit 230 may perform searches using the keywords only in the segment title of the metadata, or in both the segment title and the segment description. In either case, the search unit 230 provides the terminal device 300 with the metadata regarding the segment matching the keywords as the search result.
The metadata sorted by the metadata processor 250 may be stored in the metadata storage unit 220 in various types. For example, a list of segments in the form of XML, as shown in
The segment list contains metadata listed by segment, as shown in
The statistical information evaluated by many users may include an average of rating marks (rating_avg), view counts (view_count), recommendation counts (recommendation_count), and so on. The additional information may include a playback time of the corresponding segment (length_seconds), an upload time (upload_time), a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a representative home page, a thumbnail URL (thumbnail_url), and so on.
The search unit 230 extracts only the tag items of segments matching the keywords input by the user from the segment list shown in FIG. 6, and transmits the extracted tag items to the terminal device 300 through the network interface 240.
Then, the search request unit 370 of the terminal device 300 creates a search result screen using the transmitted tag items to be offered to the user, and the display unit 330 to displays the same. For example, it is assumed that the keyword is “Han Sukgyu”, a leading actor.
If the user of the terminal device 300 selects a desired segment by referring to the search result screen shown in
The content server 100 streams the segment of the corresponding content to the terminal device 300 upon a request from the terminal device 300.
The control unit 110 is connected to other constituent elements of the content server 100 through a communication bus and controls operations of the constituent elements.
The network interface 150 communicates with the terminal device 300 or the content server 100 through the network 50. In particular, the network interface 150 receives a streaming request from the terminal device 300 and sends a segment according to the streaming request to the terminal device 300.
The content storage unit 120 stores various content sources and encoded content. The encoder 130 encodes the content sources stored in the content storage unit 120 using the standard codec such as MPEG-4, or H.264, generates encoded content, and sends the same back to the content storage unit 120 for storage.
The streaming unit 140 extracts only parts corresponding to the segment among the encoded content and streams the same to the terminal device 300 using RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol), or RTSP (Real-time Transport Streaming Protocol). The streaming unit 140 performs extraction using information regarding the start position and end position provided from the terminal device 300.
Finally, the network interface 360 of the terminal device 300 receives the segment streamed from the content server 100. The playback unit 320 plays back the received segment. The display unit 330 displays the played segment to the user.
The user may optionally perform ratings or recommendations on the segment at any time while viewing the segment. The rating or recommendation performed by the user is fed back to the metadata management server 200. The metadata management server 200 may update the segment list stored in the metadata storage unit 220 in real time, based on the rating or recommendation.
While the content server 100 and the metadata management server 200 have been described as independent devices, they may be implemented as a combined device.
The type of each of the various components shown in
In addition, each block may represent a module, a segment, or a portion of code, which may comprise one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical functions. It should also be noted that in other implementations, the functions noted in the blocks may occur out of the order noted or in different configurations of hardware and software. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in reverse order, depending on the functionality involved.
Referring to
In addition, the procedure of the terminal device 300 searching for the segment based on the metadata provided from the metadata management server 200 is described in the following:
In operation S96, the search request unit 370 sends a search request by sending keywords input by the user to the metadata management server 200 to make a request for metadata regarding the segment matching the keywords. Thereafter, the search request unit 370 receives a response to the search request from the metadata management server 200 through the network interface 360 in operation S97.
In operation S98, the display unit 330 displays a search result screen to the user, based on the received response. An example of the search result screen is shown in
In operation S99, the search request unit 370 sends a streaming request for a particular segment to the content server 100 through the search result screen. The streaming request includes an identifier for the video content to which the segment belongs, a start position and an end position of the segment, and so on.
Finally, in operation S100, the playback unit 320 plays back the segment streamed from the content server 100, upon the streaming request.
Referring to
In operation S102, the metadata processor 250 sorts only valid metadata from the received metadata based on the statistical information obtained from the plurality of terminals. The statistical information may include at least one of rating marks evaluated by the user of the terminal device 300, view counts, recommendation counts, evaluation counts, and so on.
In operation S103, the metadata storage unit 220 stores the sorted metadata. Here, the metadata storage unit 220 preferably stores the sorted metadata in a structured document, e.g., an XML document. As shown in
In operation S104, the search unit 230 searches for segments matching the keywords input from a first terminal among the plurality of terminals. Valid metadata regarding the searched segments is provided to the first terminal in operation S105.
As described above, according to the present invention, a video tag or bookmark created by a user provided with content from an IPTV can be uploaded to a server. In addition, the video tag or bookmark created by the user can be exploited when other users search for content. That is, apart from the capability to appreciate particular content, according to the present invention, users are able to share their evaluation and/or opinion about the particular content with others. Further, the present invention can advantageously activate IPTV industry business.
While the present invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to exemplary embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the following claims. It is therefore desired that the present embodiments be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive, reference being made to the appended claims rather than the foregoing description to indicate the scope of the invention.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-2007-0024319 | Mar 2007 | KR | national |
