Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Miscellaneous
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-29
2003-06-03
El-Hady, Nabil (Department: 2154)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Miscellaneous
C709S201000, C709S202000, C707S793000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06574655
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to multimedia systems, and more particularly to the associative management of distributed multimedia assets and associated resources using multi-domain agent-based communication between heterogeneous peers.
The convergence of computer technology with the traditional “media” industries, such as broadcast television, has resulted in a jumbled assortment of products and applications that do not work well together. Multimedia products and applications seek to blend conventional computer data files and text data with audio and video sequences. Although the integration of digital encoding and storage technologies is adding new operational efficiencies, methods of managing these multimedia resources need to be upgraded to take full advantage of these new operating efficiencies.
One example is the modern television broadcast facility which has various types of components from different manufacturers that must be integrated to create an efficient, reliable environment for acquisition, production, transmission and archival of material, as shown in FIG.
1
. Acquisition Devices acquire incoming source material and store it for later use. This material may range from programs and commercials in an on-air environment, to raw news feeds and digitized field tape material in the newsroom, to live material coming from cameras in a live or sports production environment. Editing Systems are applications and associated devices that allow the manipulation of source material into an edited piece, often referred to as a composition. Various types of editing applications exist, from simple “trimming” applications used in on-air environments to “cuts-only” editors found in news and sports all the way to advanced post-production editors supporting 3D effects, multi-layered compositing, etc. Transmission Devices take the final output from the editing applications, and sometimes directly from the acquisition devices, and plays it to air. These devices are the workhorses of the station and are distinguished primarily by attributes of high availability, reliability and quality. Archives store material for later use. Since the amount of online storage is insufficient to handle all material in a system, an archive is required to store that material, either “near-line” for relatively rapid retrieval of material likely to be needed in the near future or “off-line” for material that is infrequently, if ever, needed. These archives range widely in size, all the way up to video libraries in news departments at the major networks of over 100,000 hours of storage. Control Devices are the brains of the facility and automatically control acquisition, transmission and archival devices in the facility. They also contain and manage databases of the material in the facility. Two important types of control systems found in broadcast facilities are Broadcast Automation/Control Systems that control on-air operations and Newsroom Computer Systems that control news operations.
Low-Resolution Video is a practical solution to the problem of storage costs and bandwidth limitations that make 100% reliable, highest resolution media unavailable to all interested users at a minimum cost. To make digital, non-linear production the norm in broadcast, the requirements of the production processes from acquisition to archive must be met in a practical and cost effective manner. To meet this need low-resolution encoders that generate “shadow” material and associated servers that present the “shadow” material to users have recently become available and solutions integrating them into the broadcast facility are highly sought after.
Catalogers also meet the needs of cost-conscious managers who are focused on operating at a high level of efficiency with a minimum of overhead. With the constant pressure to provide higher qualities of service to their customers, managers are led to technologies that add value without extracting a recurring cost. Catalogers are an example of such a technology, as they automatically generate or extract metadata regarding video/audio material and store it for later use without the need for manual intervention. This metadata enables faster location and identification of material for use in the production of news stories and other types of finished products. Various types of catalogers exist offering features such as automatic creation of “thumbnail” images based on intelligent scene-change detection algorithms, translation of speech to text using advanced algorithms on today's fast processors, and even scene and face-recognition. The list of technologies and products in this area is sure to grow in the future. In addition other metadata actually generated by the cameraperson, editor or journalist at the source of the material's production, such as geospatial coordinates, work notes, etc., will grow and be managed by these systems.
All these components are responsible for managing multimedia assets and associated metadata—but no “language” exists to provide a single, unified view of the material that allows users to easily locate and access all this material. This unified, logical view is required not only by the traditional “video jockeys”, such as editors and librarians, but also by other facility personnel, such as sales, marketing and management, and even people outside the facility, such as researchers. Clearly there exists a need for an Asset Management System that provides this unification.
Various different types of Asset Management Systems attempt to address these problems. Most Broadcast Automation System vendors, such as Louth and Odetics, provide Media Management for on-air operations and some also address news production as well. Several other companies, such as Silicon Graphics and Cinebase, have developed Asset Management Systems that are targeted at post-production facilities. Some of these systems are designed to be open, an important attribute. But very few address the issues involved when post-production, live/sports
ews production and on-air transmission must interact. Even fewer address the problems encountered when these various assets are distributed across wide geographies. None do so in an open, scalable, fault-tolerant peer-to-peer environment.
A common approach in current systems is a client-server architecture. These systems require that distributed devices copy their metadata and sometimes even content to a central repository. The result is a system that is too unwieldy and expensive, or that requires that the applications at the assets give up abilities that currently exist within the Asset Management System.
Another common approach is an object-oriented architecture. Object-oriented architectures are excellent for building systems, either client-server or distributed, with pre-defined behavior through specification of interfaces via an Interface Definition Language (IDL). However this rigor is not conducive to flexible, extensible, dynamically configurable systems since the defined interfaces are early-bound and application specific—the introduction of new messages often causes the entire system to be rebuilt. To be truly extensible, a unified system for global sharing of information needs to provide a common language for exchanging data that is self-describing and of any character set.
The use of agent-based technology for information management is being investigated by ARPA's Knowledge Sharing Effort. The KQML language specification is a result of this investigation. The InfoSleuth technology (mcc.com/project/infosleuth) is one example of a KQML-based system for distributed knowledge sharing. However these efforts do not include allowing users to locate assets through various means, exposing information about these assets via a standard cross-platform data exchange language, maintaining synchronization of logically equivalent multimedia assets, providing the ability to trace relationships between assets stored in heterogeneous systems, allowing manipulation of assets by users and administrators including indir
Govindakrishnan Rajagopal
Hillebrandt Mark S.
Jin Baochun
Joshi Suhas
Krishnamurthy Sridhar
Davenport Francis A.
El-Hady Nabil
Fried Harvey D.
Thomson Licensing SA
Tripoli Joseph S.
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