Patent Application
20100132005
The present invention relates generally to the field of media and, in particular, to playing, viewing, and controlling video or other media.
Current media players may be used for playing live or pre-recorded content, which may be played by streaming the content over the Internet to a media player, or loading the content (e.g., source media file) from a local media storage device to a media player. Content may be comprised of audio, video, slideshow pictures, or any combinations thereof. Content may be represented according to one of many media file types (e.g., MP3, M3U, MPEG(-1, -2, -4), QuickTime Movie, AU, MIDI, JPEG, GIF, TIFF). Media players today also may offer features for controlling content, even during play. For example, media players today may offer features for playing content at a normal or accelerated speed, reverse playing content at a normal or accelerated speed, pausing the play of content, forwarding or reversing paused content, and skipping-over active content to new content. However, current media players do not provide a feature for recapping earlier media content according to a recapping control variable, then displaying descriptive information related to the recapped media content. Moreover, current media players also do not provide a feature where the descriptive information related to the recapped media content may be text, images, audio, or a combination thereof.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a system and method for playing and controlling content that substantially obviates one or more problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
An object of the present invention is to provide a computer-implemented method for opening a media file or receiving a media broadcast, wherein the media file or media broadcast are stored locally or remotely; playing content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and controlling the playing with control features, wherein the control features include at least a feature for recapping earlier media content.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, a system comprises one or more processors; memory; one or more programs stored in memory, the one or more programs comprising instructions to: open a media file or receive a media broadcast, wherein the media file or media broadcast are stored locally or remotely; play content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and control the play with control features, wherein the control features include at least a feature for recapping earlier media content.
In another aspect, a computer-readable storage medium stores one or more programs configured for execution by a computer, the one or more programs comprising instructions to: open a media file or receive a media broadcast, wherein the media file or media broadcast are stored locally or remotely; play content of the media file or media broadcast at a default speed; and control the play with control features, wherein the control features include at least a feature for recapping earlier media content.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description serve to explain the principles of the invention. In the drawings:
Reference will now be made in detail to embodiments, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. In the following detailed description, numerous non-limiting specific details are set forth in order to assist in understanding the subject matter presented herein. It will be apparent, however, to one of ordinary skill in the art that various alternatives may be used without departing from the scope of the present invention and the subject matter may be practiced without these specific details. For example, it will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that the subject matter presented herein can be implemented on any type of standalone system or client-server compatible system containing any type of client, network, server, and database elements.
In some embodiments,
In some embodiments, media files/broadcasts are loaded locally from storage or remotely and may subsequently be opened by a media player 1001. The media player 1001 may be a standalone program running on the computer 1010 or the receiver or other media device 1021. Alternatively, the media player 1001 may be executed within a browser or other program and may access media files/broadcasts stored locally or remotely. The contents of a loaded media file/broadcast being played by the media player 1001 may be displayed via the screen of the computer 1010 or the TV 1020 or other display device. The media player 1001 may play the contents of the media file/broadcast in sequence order from the first frame to the last frame and the user/viewer may enjoy the current content being played 1002.
In some embodiments, the media player 1001 may play the media file/broadcast contents at a default speed (e.g., at a specific frame(s)/second(s) rate), which may depend on the type of media file/broadcast and/or the media file's/broadcast's contents. In addition, before, during, or after playing the contents of a media file/broadcast, the control functions and features of the media player 1001 may be used to accelerate the speed at which the content of an opened media file is played. The control functions and features of the media player 1001 may further be used to pause the playing of media file content, skip-over content of the media file, reverse-play content of the media file, and/or recap earlier media content.
In some embodiments, the media player 1001 may include a feature for recapping earlier media content according to a recapping control variable. The recapping control variable may be used by the feature for recapping earlier media content in order to determine which earlier media content to recap. The recapping control variable may comprise an earlier time in the media content, a threshold point in the media content, an earlier/specific scene in the media content, and/or a critical point in the media content (e.g., narration, theme, climax, ending). The exemplary media player 1001 also presents the played content 1002 and descriptive text (or other information) for the recapped content 1004 being played.
In some embodiments, the media player 2001 may set a value of a recapping control variable responsible for recapping earlier content of an opened media file. The value of the variable may be enforced by a module (e.g.,
In some embodiments, the value of the variable may be manipulated through the media player 2001 and changed from its original or current value. For example, the variable may be manipulated for recapping earlier media content according to time (e.g., ten seconds, one minute, 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 1 hour, or any other applicable time interval), or according to an earlier/specific scene, or according to any specification known to those skilled in the art. Alternatively, the value may be manipulated for recapping earlier media content according to a critical point, or according to a threshold point, or according t any specified point known to those skilled in the art.
In some embodiments, the recapping of earlier media content feature includes displaying descriptive information related to the recapped media content 3004. For example, by activating/invoking a media navigation feature such as the back button or the reverse play with acceleration button of the subset of media navigation features 3003, closed-captioning text, other descriptive text, an image, audio, or a combination of any of the foregoing may be displayed in the descriptive information 3004 component. Descriptive information may also be displayed via a pop-up window or other graphical user interface component (GUI) without departing from the scope of the present invention. The media player 3001 module (e.g.,
In some embodiments, the communications module 5001 receives and transmits data over a network (e.g., network 10) through one or more ports (e.g., HTTP port 80); the interpreter 5002 may interpret scripts/mark-up languages and execute them in accordance with their instructions; the browser components 5003 may implement features such as those for navigating the Internet, supporting add-in(s)/on(s), implementing custom user options and executing in accordance with those options (e.g., permissions, home page preference, bookmarks, script preferences, history preferences, privacy preferences, web page preferences, and/or other Internet/user options); and, the embedded media player 5004 (which may, in some embodiments, be an add-in/on) may play media content in accordance with the present invention as described herein.
In some embodiments, the feature components 5010 may implement features such as media playlist management, media type conversion, media compression/decompression, media playlist/library synchronization, media ripping/burning from/to external storage mediums, media player options (e.g., window size, volume, media quality, play speed); the content reader 5011 may read and decode the contents of a media file, where the media file contents may be represented according to a specific file type and compressed; and, the controller 5012 may implement features for opening, navigating, controlling access to, and/or manipulating media files and/or their content.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the present invention without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Thus, it is intended that the present invention cover the modifications and variations of this invention provided they come within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents.
