Sony Corporation

Sony Electronics Inc

Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Sont Corporation

Sont Electronics Inc.

Toby Walker

Ali Jezu Tabatabai

Mohammed Zubair Visharam

Hawley K Rising, Iii

Hiroshi Matsubara

John Michael Rauser

David L Selinger

Patrik Sundberg

Hiromasa Shibata

The invention relates to encoding and decoding descriptions of multimedia content in two formats using access units. The invention further relates to dynamically updating multimedia description using access units and to supporting the delivery of distributed multimedia descriptions.

Delivery of multimedia descriptions using access units

An encoding system includes a video coding layer (VCL) to generate slices when encoding multimedia data, a generic adaptation layer (GAL) to create, from the slices, a set of GAL units having a format that is generic to various transport systems, and a network adaptation layer (NAL) associated with a specific transport system to map the set of GAL units to the format of the specific transport system.

Generic adaptation layer for JVT video

The content description of multimedia content contains a plurality of descriptor values that pertain to specific events within the media. A Transport Hint Table (THT) provides a set of synchronization events that indicate the relation between timed events in the media and their representation in the content's description data. The THT allows for synchronized delivery of presentation of content description data with the associated events in the media. The THT provides a set of sync events based on the existence of 'time' related events obtained from the content description data, which are relevant to particular events in the media. The THT allows the transport layer encoder to use the time-related events to synchronize the scheduled delivery times of media content segments and their associated descriptions. The THT also provides information for fragmenting a description for delivery and for managing resources at the decoder.

Transport hint table for synchronizing delivery time between multimedia content and multimedia content descriptions

Updates to a content description represented as a tree are contained in a series of fragment update units. Each fragment update unit includes an update command and a navigation path, and may include a fragment payload depending on the update command. The update command is applied to a set of nodes in the tree that are selected using the navigation path. The fragment payload may contain a fragment, a fragment reference, or an attribute. The update command may be an add, delete or replace command. More than one fragment payload may be present in the fragment update unit, with each fragment payload applied to a different one of the nodes from the set selected by the navigation path.

Multiple updates to content descriptions using a single command

Switch sample metadata defining switch sample sets associated with multimedia data is created. Each switch sample set includes samples that have identical decoding values. Further, a file associated with the multimedia data is formed. This file includes the switch sample metadata, as well as other information pertaining to the multimedia data.

Method and apparatus for supporting advanced coding formats in media files

An apparatus and methods advantageously select content items for dynamically-generated web pages in an intelligent and virtually autonomous manner. This permits the operator of the web site to rapidly identify and respond to trends, thereby advantageously updating the web site relatively quickly and efficiently without or with less time consuming and expensive manual labor. User interaction for a plurality of users with the web site is collected in a database. For various content items, the database is mined to extract relationships between probability and references of select attributes in probability models. When a new web page is requested, attributes, which can include attributes associated with a user, are used as references to the applicable probability models of selected content items, combined with value weighting to generate expected values, and selected for use in the web page at least partially based on the expected values.

Systems and methods for statistically selecting content items to be used in a dynamically-generated display

A data document is constructed by attaching a set of child nodes, selected from nodes in an existing data document or a document fragment, at an update location, which is a node in the existing data document or the document fragment that is identified by a navigation path. When the update command is a merge, one or mode nodes ('merge nodes') in the document fragment are identified as update locations, and the nodes in the existing data document are merged as child nodes of the merge nodes in the document fragment. When the update command is a join, a node ('join node') in the existing data document is identified as the update location, and an ordered list specifies which nodes in the existing data document and which nodes in the document fragment are to be joined as the set of child nodes for the join node. The join and merge update commands, navigation paths, and document fragments may transmitted as a series of fragment update units to construct the data document.

Incremental bottom-up construction of data documents

Transcoding between content data and description data. The transcoding may include transcoding content data to corresponding description data. Additional description information to complete the description data may be requested. The transcoding may include transcoding description data to content data, including seeking content data items that match the description data. Content data items that best match the description data may be selected and included in the content data. A user may be requested to select items from a group of matching content data items. The content data may be stored according to the Moving Pictures Expert Group-4 (MPEG-4) standard, and the description data may be stored according to the MPEG-7 standard. The transcoding may be achieved via rules stored in the Extensible Stylesheet Transformation (XSLT) format. The transcoding may be implemented on a computing device, such as a personal computer.

Transcoding between content data and description data

A method permitting compact ways to update relationships between entities in an audiovideo sequence, or serial set of sequences, the method comprising: writing a description between the entities, the description containing relations; determining the relations that may be represented by parameters, each parameter having a numerical value; and obtaining from the user, one or more of the following: (a) the numerical value for the parameter; (b) a description of the parameter containing the numerical value; and (c) a description capable of setting the parameter dynamically.

Fuzzy relations and graph structures for compact description and modification

The invention provides an AV signal processing apparatus and method by which a boundary between scenes is detected so that recorded video data can be played back beginning with an arbitrary scene. First, video data inputted is divided into video segments or audio segments or, if possible, into both of video and audio segments. Then, feature amounts representative of features of the segment are calculated, and then, similarity measurement between segments is performed using the feature amounts. Thereafter, it is discriminated whether or not the segment corresponds to a break of a scene. Thus, the video-audio processing apparatus uses the dissimilarity measurement criterion and the feature amounts calculated as above to determine, regarding each segment as the reference segment at present, in which one of the past and the future with respect to the reference segment the ratio of presence of neighboring similar segments is higher, and investigates the pattern of the change of the ratio to discriminate whether or not the reference segment corresponds to a boundary of a scene.

AV signal processing apparatus for detecting a boundary between scenes, method and recording medium therefore

As a unit element for defining a describing procedure for description of a feature data characteristic of the content of a video data, a descriptor is formed in a description format structured to have its attribute as lower-level element and which may include other descriptor as attribute. That is, the description format for the descriptor consists of a feature indicative of a descriptor or attribute as lower level element, and a feature type indicative of the data type of the feature.

Data describing method and data processor

The video signal processorincludes a scene detectorwhich uses features extracted for visual segments and/or audio segments resulted from segmentation of an input stream of video data, and a criterion for measurement of similarity between visual and/or audio segment pairs, calculated for each of the features using the similarity measurement criterion, to detect two visual segments and/or audio segments whose time gap is within a predetermined temporal threshold and whose dissimilarity is less than a predetermined dissimilarity threshold and group the segments into a scene consisting of visual segments and/or audio segments reflecting the semantics of the video data content and temporally contiguous to each other.

Signal processing method and video signal processor for detecting and analyzing a pattern reflecting the semantics of the content of a signal

The video signal processor includes a chain detector which uses features extracted from visual and/or audio segments divided from an input stream of video data, and a criterion for determination of similarity between visual and/or audio segment pairs, calculated for each of the features using the similarity determination criterion, to detect similarity chains each composed of a plurality of visual and/or audio segments similar to each other from the visual and/or audio segments, and a chain analyzer which analyzes the similarity chains to determine and output local and/or global video structures of the video data.

Signal processing method and video/voice processing device

In step S the image-voice processing apparatus divides segments into sub-segments that will be candidates for r segments, and in step S groups together similar sub-segments out of the sub-segments obtained. And in step S the image-voice processing apparatus selects object groups for signatures, and then after selecting in step S a r segment from each of the groups selected, computes in step S the weight for each of the r segments obtained.

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Toby Walker