The present invention generally relates to workflow systems and methods and, more particularly, to systems and methods where metadata is collected, managed and exchanged between a plurality of devices at different times in a workflow to contribute to one or more databases for a completed project, e.g., in making a motion picture.
In scenarios were a project requires a group effort, planning and managing the project becomes difficult. The project complexity increases the problems associated with managing the workflow. Traditional project management techniques often required a delegation of small portions of the project to different groups of individuals, which would at some future time compare notes to ensure that the portions fit together to provide for the assembly of project's goal.
Such workflow issues exist in the movie industry. With the complexity of modern motion pictures, multiple crews, special effects teams, etc. make it difficult to manage the workflow and produce a finished product in an efficient and cost effective way. Presently, a problem exists in the recording, collection, exchange, management, and usage of metadata in motion picture creation workflows.
Metadata needs to be recorded and used with appropriate devices at different points in the workflow for automating tasks and making the processes more efficient and mistake-prone. Existing systems for collecting and managing metadata are typically closed and proprietary. In addition, the systems would only cover small portions of a workflow.
Examples of current systems are paper records from the production crew with information about circle takes, camera settings, etc. In addition, some productions have used personal digital assistants (PDAs) for recording circle take information on set. In these PDA-based systems, the circle take information is dumped in a database and never used or accessed after dailies. A circle take is a take the director liked (e.g., well acted, right dialog, good action, etc) and is usually given special attention at dailies and editorial.
In addition, there are some proprietary systems that record camera and set information for visual effects (VFXs) in the ancillary space of High-Definition Serial Digital Interface (HD-SDI) links. However, this metadata is usually short lived since special equipment is needed to read/write it. Therefore, most equipment will ignore and sometimes remove this metadata.
An inventive method includes recording content during production of media and associating metadata with the recorded content during media production. Metadata collection devices include devices incorporated in the equipment and/or devices configured to externally access the system. The metadata collection devices are configured to collect metadata and associate the metadata with the content at any point and any time in the workflow. The collected metadata can then be used to automate, facilitate and improve content processing in any part of the workflow. A system for recording and using metadata in a workflow includes at least one recording device capable of collecting content, metadata devices configured to collect metadata associated with the content anywhere in the workflow at anytime, a server configured to receive metadata from the metadata devices at any point in the workflow and store the metadata in a database, and at least one usage device configured to access the server and render the metadata in association with the content throughout the workflow.
The advantages, nature, and various additional features of the invention will appear more fully upon consideration of the illustrative embodiments now to be described in detail in connection with accompanying drawings wherein:
It should be understood that the drawings are for purposes of illustrating the concepts of the invention and are not necessarily the only possible configuration for illustrating the invention.
The present invention supports collection, management, and usage of metadata at any point of motion picture workflows. Any type of device can be used to record or extract relevant metadata that is collected and made available to other points of the workflows for automating, improving accuracy, facilitating tasks, etc.
It is to be understood that the present invention is described in terms of a metadata collection, management and exchange in the movie industry; however, the present invention is much broader and may include any workflow project in any industry. In addition, the present invention is applicable to a network environment that fosters the entry and usage of metadata in conjunction with the collection and usage of other digital data. The metadata can be recorded by any recording method including recording data taken by telephone, set top boxes, computer, satellite links, computer entry, etc. The present invention is described in terms of a private network; however, the concepts of the present invention may be extended to any wireless and wired network type that may include a public network, a private network or a combination of both.
It should be further understood that the elements shown in the FIGS. may be implemented in various forms of hardware, software or combinations thereof. Preferably, these elements are implemented in a combination of hardware and software on one or more appropriately programmed general-purpose devices, which may include a processor, memory and input/output interfaces.
The present description illustrates the principles of the present invention. It will thus be appreciated that those skilled in the art will be able to devise various arrangements that, although not explicitly described or shown herein, embody the principles of the invention and are included within its spirit and scope.
All examples and conditional language recited herein are intended for pedagogical purposes to aid the reader in understanding the principles of the invention and the concepts contributed by the inventor to furthering the art, and are to be construed as being without limitation to such specifically recited examples and conditions.
Moreover, all statements herein reciting principles, aspects, and embodiments of the invention, as well as specific examples thereof, are intended to encompass both structural and functional equivalents thereof. Additionally, it is intended that such equivalents include both currently known equivalents as well as equivalents developed in the future, i.e., any elements developed that perform the same function, regardless of structure.
Thus, for example, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the block diagrams presented herein represent conceptual views of illustrative circuitry embodying the principles of the invention. Similarly, it will be appreciated that any flow charts, flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, pseudocode, and the like represent various processes which may be substantially represented in computer readable media and so executed by a computer or processor, whether or not such computer or processor is explicitly shown.
The functions of the various elements shown in the figures may be provided through the use of dedicated hardware as well as hardware capable of executing software in association with appropriate software. When provided by a processor, the functions may be provided by a single dedicated processor, by a single shared processor, or by a plurality of individual processors, some of which may be shared. Moreover, explicit use of the term “processor” or “controller” should not be construed to refer exclusively to hardware capable of executing software, and may implicitly include, without limitation, digital signal processor (“DSP”) hardware, read-only memory (“ROM”) for storing software, random access memory (“RAM”), and non-volatile storage.
Other hardware, conventional and/or custom, may also be included. Their function may be carried out through the operation of program logic, through dedicated logic, through the interaction of program control and dedicated logic, or even manually, the particular technique being selectable by the implementer as more specifically understood from the context.
In the claims hereof, any element expressed as a means for performing a specified function is intended to encompass any way of performing that function including, for example, a) a combination of circuit elements that performs that function or b) software in any form, including, therefore, firmware, microcode or the like, combined with appropriate circuitry for executing that software to perform the function. The invention as defined by such claims resides in the fact that the functionalities provided by the various recited means are combined and brought together in the manner which the claims call for. It is thus regarded that any means that can provide those functionalities are equivalent to those shown herein.
Present principles provide several options for maintaining metadata and content. For example: (1) the metadata could be collected and be transported together with the content (
Referring now in specific detail to the drawings in which like reference numerals identify similar or identical elements throughout the several views, and initially to FIG. 1, an architecture of an illustrative system 10 is shown in accordance with one particularly useful embodiment. The system 10 may include a network of devices capable of communication with at least one database 30. The devices may include a camera or cameras 12 or 26, processors (e.g. a datacine processor 22 for dailies processing and viewing, computers or other viewing/editing equipment 24, etc. These devices either record or use workflow metadata. The devices may include a capability for recording content, and metadata may be combined with the content.
For example, in the case of a camera 12, image data is collected for a scene during filming. Simultaneously with the filming or at a different time, data may be automatically acquired or entered by a user or other device to be recorded with the content or at least associated with the content in the form of metadata. The metadata may include camera settings, lookup tables for images (e.g., color correction information or the like), or any other information that could be useful for the production and/or editing of a film.
The content and metadata from the camera may be reported directly to a physical vault or database 30 or passed on to a next stage in the processing of the film (or digital media), e.g., digitizing of the film or early processing using a datacine processor 22. Processor 22 may employ the content and/or the metadata to enhance the datacine (digitizing) processing of the film from camera 12. In addition, the datacine processing 22 may provide new metadata or augment the old metadata with e.g., scanner settings, lookup tables, or other useful data. The metadata enhanced (e.g., accumulated metadata from all previous processes) content may then be sent or provided to a next processing stage. As before, the metadata can be provided directly to a database 30 or included with the content or edited content for the next stage in the workflow.
In the example shown in
System 10 may include a digital camera 26 which may be used instead of or in addition to a film camera 12 for recording image content. Film or digital media may be employed to record metadata taken at the time of filming which is related to the filming process. Alternately, metadata may be associated with the film scenes or frames and recorded directly to an archive or database 30.
Film from camera 12 may include the metadata, such as camera settings, lookup tables, etc., or the metadata based on notes or other collected information may be introduced or associated with content when the film is converted to digital information with equipment 22. Equipment 22 may include processing equipment, e.g., for viewing and editing dailies. When the film is converted, the metadata may be placed directly in with the content and forwarded to a next stage. Alternately, the metadata may be sent to archive 30 directly.
Early editing equipment 24 may be employed for grading, editing scenes and otherwise enhancing the content. Equipment 24 may receive digital content from digital camera 26 and/or digital content from equipment 22. Equipment 24 may also receive the metadata from camera 26 (e.g., camera settings, lookup table, etc.) and from equipment 22. Equipment 24 changes or adds additional metadata (e.g. color information, edit lists, etc.) to the content (or provides the metadata directly to the archive). All the metadata previously added in the workflow is provided to the editors (or others accessing the information) of the motion picture of feature. Editing equipment 28 uses the content and metadata to better organize the content and make corrections based upon recorded information. The archive 30 also may provide metadata (e.g., access rights and location information for stored metadata).
Referring to
The system can acquire, collect and manage metadata that is relevant from the point of view of a director, a cinematographer, a VFX supervisor, a camera operator, an editor, a colorist, etc. Examples of metadata recording devices may include PDAs, cellphones, laptop, sensors, cameras, recorders, etc. In addition, editing or processing equipment may add metadata to the content or the database. The system 100 permits the downloading of metadata recording applications (such as in Java, C++, etc) to any device with Internet access, wireless network access, or other type of connection. In this way, completely different devices (that may be different PDA, camera, computer, etc.) may be used in the data acquisition phase. These different metadata recording devices then may be used by different parties to input metadata about the same event, at the same time. For example, a director and a special effects worker may input metadata about a scene at the same time. This metadata is then made available at any other stage through a database 102 or a server (See
In accordance with the embodiment shown in
Referring to
Referring to
The exchange of metadata between metadata servers 170 and devices 150, 156, 158, 160, etc. may be performed through open, standard Web Services and protocols (e.g., XML, RPC and SOAP). Web services are platform independent so the present invention can work in heterogeneous computing environments (e.g., the PDA could be C++ on Windows CE™; whereas the metadata server 170 could run Java™ on Linux™).
One illustrative embodiment has been constructed and simulated, and includes a PDA used to record circle take metadata. Web services through a wireless connection were employed to send the metadata to a mobile metadata server (a laptop). A dailies station accessed the circle take metadata using a web browser. The circle take metadata was used by the dailies station to create a CD that distinguished between circle takes and other takes.
Present principles also provide a schema where the creation of metadata for a scene, may be synchronized between different devices. For example, a SMPTE time code may be used to link metadata produced by a PDA to metadata produced by a camera. It is also envisioned that other methods for synchronization may be used, such as, by employing a master clock, and the like. By synchronizing different devices, the manual entry of each event (such as entering in scene 5, scene 6, etc.) would not be necessary for every device. It is also contemplated that although descriptive terms like “scene” and “take” may be used to describe a particular event and its associated metadata, other objects may be used to describe an event. For example, a person editing a film may find a certain circle take by requesting that the metadata server render a screen that indicates circles with a graphic element using a thumbnail image from the circle take. Hence, a person who is looking for a particular event may use both textual and graphic elements to identify a scene/take of interest. Database 102 may include a network of databases that keep the metadata synchronized with each other and accessible by any authorized person and anywhere (even where no Internet connection may be available). The database may be distributed among and between the devices in the network. The network may be set up for a specific project and the metadata may be collected, managed and stored by a plurality of distributed databases. A synchronization protocol, e.g., time stamping and a system of unique identifiers may be put in place to provide authorization/access control and permit updated information to be accessible and apparent to users. The time stamps or unique identifiers may be employed to link content with respective metadata and vice versa.
While present principles are described for a filmmaking project, such projects are for illustrative purposes. The present invention is equally applicable to other projects and workflows where metadata notes and equipment may be employed to permit an improved product. For example, metadata collection and usage may be useful in a manufacturing environment where electronic records of a product are maintained throughout an assembly or manufacturing process. Other examples may include the production or recording or portable media such as compact disks, DVDs, etc.
Having described preferred embodiments for a work flow metadata system and method (which are intended to be illustrative and not limiting), it is noted that modifications and variations can be made by persons skilled in the art in light of the above teachings. It is therefore to be understood that changes may be made in the particular embodiments of the invention disclosed which are within the scope and spirit of the invention as outlined by the appended claims. Having thus described the invention with the details and particularity required by the patent laws, what is claimed and desired protected by Letters Patent is set forth in the appended claims.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/741,997, filed Dec. 2, 2005, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/US2006/022255 | 6/8/2006 | WO | 00 | 6/2/2008 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60741997 | Dec 2005 | US |