Thomson Licensing

Deutsche Thomson-brandt Gmbh

Wolfgang Klausberger

Stefan Kubsch

Hui Li

Meinolf Blawat

Dirk Adolph

Marco Winter

Dietmar Hepper

Ralf Ostermann

Uwe Janssen

Axel Kochale

Harald Schiller

Hartmut Peters

Jobst Hörentrup

Otto Klank

Thomas Brune

Stefan Abeling

Friedrich Timmermann

Michael Pieper

Johann Maas

J&uuml;rgen Laabs

Juergen Laabs

A distributed storage system able to support real-time recording of streaming data shall be provided. Therefore, on the basis of Material Exchange Format (MXF) formatted files a data stream is packed into at least a first MXF formatted file and a second formatted MXF file. First connection data are inserted into the first MXF formatted file, wherein this first connection data points to the second MXF formatted file. Furthermore, second connection data are inserted into the second MXF formatted file, wherein the second connection data points to the first MXF formatted file. These connection data inserted as metadata into the MXF formatted files enable both seamless real-time stream recording and stream-able data playback.

Method and device for recording or playing back a data stream

It is desired to link photo data and video data taken by a digital camcorder. Therefore, there is provided a device and method for linking multimedia data, wherein linking information is formed on the basis of first and/or second multimedia data. The linking information is stored on a recording medium together with the first multimedia data. The second multimedia data may be stored together with respective linking information to the first multimedia data on a second recording medium. Thus, a camera-man while recording is able to set up logo or index pictures for a video film.

Method and device for linking multimedia data

The present invention relates to a mass storage system with improved usage of buffer capacity, and more specifically to a mass storage system for real-time data storage with an embedded controller. According to the invention, the mass storage system has a first data path between a real-time data interface and a mass storage array, the first data path including a data buffer without access latency, and a second data path between an embedded processor and the mass storage array, wherein the data buffer without access latency is also used as a data buffer for non real-time data transfers between the embedded processor and the mass storage array.

Mass storage system with improved usage of buffer capacity

The present invention relates to a redundancy protected mass storage system with increased performance, and more specifically to a mass storage system with multiple storage units. According to the invention, the resources that are essentially provided for compensating the damage of one or more storage units are also used to enhance the system performance. For this purpose during reading or writing the storage system just waits for the responses of a minimum number of required storage units to start reading or writing, respectively.

Redundancy protected mass storage system with increased performance

The invention comprises an application for recording and the playback of MPEG-2 transport-streams transmitted via DVB-systems with optical discs. Apart from audio- and video-signals, additional information (which describe the content of the DVB-multiplex) will also be transmitted in DVB-SI descriptors. These descriptors correspond to the incoming transport-stream-packets and can be used for comfortable features, like event-triggered start of a recording or automatic generation of play-lists.

Appliance-guided edit-operations in advanced digital video recording systems

Search in stocks of data, particularly on optical media, is intended to be optimized in terms of the time required for the search. It is therefore proposed that the search be carried out in two steps. In a first search step, the entire database is scanned on the disk storage medium. In a second search step, executed in parallel, intermediate results from the first search step are searched. This allows the number of skips on a disk to be reduced, which results in increases of speed, particularly in the case of optical drives.

Method and apparatus for searching a database in two search steps

Networks may be implemented using peer-to-peer technology. A plurality of peers may form a peer-group, having a unique group label. To relieve the user from administrative tasks, some configuration routines for such networks may be automated. A peer-group may select one of its peers as negotiation peer, having the task to communicate with other peers, e.g. negotiation peers from other peer-groups. When merging or splitting peer-groups, the group label is usually modified. But it may be advantageous to keep the group label. If a new peer-group in a peer-to-peer network is created by merging or splitting of peer-groups, a method for selecting a group label for the new peer-group comprises determining a negotiation peer, exchanging information between the negotiation peers in the case of merging, comparing features of the two peer-groups and assigning the label of one of the peer-groups to the new peer-group.

Method for assigning an identifier to a peer-group in a peer-to-peer network

A method enables and controls automatic propagation of metadata items to a recording media or to devices for reading from or writing to recording media. The metadata items are provided with a propagation property, which defines to which recording media or to which devices the metadata items shall propagate, and on which recording media or in which devices the metadata items shall be stored. At least when a recording medium is inserted into or removed from a device, or when the device is powered up or down, the metadata items are automatically propagated and stored in accordance with the propagation property.

Method for controlling the propagation of metadata items

A logical quality-of-service management method for peer-to-peer networks uses a special group service for QoS management within peer-groups. This group service determines and assigns a budget per time unit for each peer. Such time unit may be in the range of milliseconds or few seconds. It may also determine a group budget for the peer-group. While a peer uses bandwidth, i.e. while it sends or receives data, its budget is decreased. When a peer has exhausted its budget, it has to lower its priority for transferring or receiving data. Each peer is responsible for keeping its own budget. If a peer does not keep the conditions, other peers may have the right to deny the data transfer from that peer. The QoS service function is advertised in peer-group advertisement messages.

Method for improving quality-of-service management in networks

The handling of large amounts of data on storing media shall be simplified. Therefore, a method for maintaining a storage media by generating, editing or reading log data related to the content and usage of a data item stored or to be stored on a storage medium is provided. Data items are deleted or recommendations for deletion are provided on the basis of the log data from the storage medium. Thus, the user is relieved from the unpleasant and time-consuming task of deleting data items from recording media.

Recording media maintenance support

The handling of metadata being provided in different formats shall be simplified. Therefore, it is suggested to provide metadata in a first metadata structure having a first format and providing a second metadata structure having a first format and providing a second metadata structure having a second format, wherein link data are deposited in the second metadata structure. The link data point to metadata in the first metadata structure. Thus, it is possible to trealize synchronous and automatic editing of metadata and its mirror metadata.

Method and device for handling metadata

DVD Rewritable/Re-recordable discs will be used for recording and playing back digital bitstreams, for example MPEG data packets. To enable proper real-time playback of stored MPEG transport packets, a time information is to be added to every data packet to be recorded. A DVD streamer is connected to the application device via an interface, e.g. IEEE 1394. The interface internally uses timestamps having a special format. According to the invention, such interface-generated timestamps are also used for the DVD stream recording, instead of additionally generated independent streamer-specific timestamps. However, a timestamp format conversion is to be carried out because the DVD Streamer timestamp format is different from the IEEE 1394 timestamp format. For such timestamp format conversion differences between consecutive IEEE 1394 timestamps are determined and are used for calculating the DVD stream recording timestamps.

Method data recorder for recording data packet timestamps

The resistance against recording defects of a write-once optical disk is enhanced allowing realtime recording and playback of data streams with a single speed disk drive. A data stream is recorded in data blocks on the optical disk. An error correction block for one or more data blocks is generated and written on the same optical disk during recording. A spare data area is kept blank on the storage medium and used for storing a defect data block reconstructed by using the error correction block.

Method and apparatus for recording a data stream on a storage medium

The invention relates to the updating of a local copy of metadata. First change history data of metadata are read from an optical storage medium. Second change history data of the metadata are read from a local storage of an optical storage medium playback and/or recording device. If the first and second change history data are different a change attribute is read a from the optical storage medium and an update operation of the metadata stored in the local storage or an update operation in the optical storage medium is determined depending on the change attribute.

Method and device for updating a local copy of metadata

The use of disk-assisted, dynamic databases is to be optimized. To this end, provision is made for new data intended to update an old stock of data to have a second index, relating to the new data, generated for them, and for said second index to be stored on the disk storage medium as a supplement to the first index relating to the old stock of data. This allows the number of write access operations to the disk storage medium to be reduced. This is particularly advantageous for optical media, whose useful life can be increased as a result.

Growing community of inventors

Hannover, Germany

Wolfgang Klausberger