Motion video signal processing for recording or reproducing – Local trick play processing – With randomly accessible medium
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-02
2004-10-19
Tran, Thai (Department: 2615)
Motion video signal processing for recording or reproducing
Local trick play processing
With randomly accessible medium
C386S349000, C725S141000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06807367
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to movie display systems, and more specifically, to interactive implementations that provide for dynamic selection of displayed movie segments and control of the temporal presentation rate of these segments.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
“Motion Picture” or video imagery in the form of a sequence of still frame images presented in rapid succession—a “movie”—is a commonly understood effective and powerful method of conveying dynamically changing images to humans.
Movies are today used in some manner in virtually all industry and consumer contexts. Applications for movies include entertainment, advertising, group presentation, education, assembly and repair, art, scientific visualization, accident scene re-enactment, and many others.
Note that by “movie”, we refer to the presentation of images sequences slightly differing in appearance such that the appearance of motion (or time evolution of another parameter, such as scene lighting, if object position is not the time-evolving element) is perceived by viewers. We do not require that a “movie” be of particular length, stored on a particular media, have a particular frame rate, etc. Thus we include in the content realm TV shows, advertisements, computer-generated scientific visualizations, etc., as well as full length feature Hollywood films. For storage media we include videotape, film, Compact Disk (CD), Digital Video Disk (DVD), computer hard disk, etc. Further, we use the word “movie” to include image sequences or image and audio sequences combined.
In consequence of movies' effectiveness in many applications, not only is the use of movies accepted and widespread, but movies are already available containing images on virtually any subject one could imagine. Such movie images come both from the physical world and from computer graphics. Furthermore, inventions such as consumer camcorders, and to a somewhat lesser extent general-purpose computer animation packages, make creating new movie image content a relatively inexpensive and straightforward matter even for the individual consumer.
While movies are a powerful communications medium, in their common viewing modes they suffer from a number of disadvantages that manifest themselves in many important presentation contexts. These include:
1) Requirement of Audience Attention for Significant Time Periods: For effective presentation, movies typically require audience attention over an extended period of time. In locations such as trade shows, science museums, retail environments, and other similarly time-limited viewing contexts, this can be a significant problem.
2) Lack of Novelty: Because of the proliferation of movies throughout all aspects of our society via TV and other media, movies as a presentation medium lacks novelty for many viewers. In order for movie-based displays to get viewers' attention, therefore, they can require outstanding, and thus typically very expensive, image content and organization production work in the form of filming and editing, computer graphics, or both.
3) Difficulty to Quickly Locate Information of Interest: In environments in which losing the attention of the audience is not the main problem (such as research and video editing environments), it is nevertheless the case that on movie segments, particularly lengthy ones, there can be significant difficult finding particular information in a timely and efficient manner.
4) Lack of Ability to Adequately Dynamically Alter the Rate and Manner of Movie Presentation:
[“Manner” is included in the phrase “rate and manner of movie presentation” to convey is the idea that the frame progression may be a complex highly non-linear function of time. For example, consider a film of a person walking across the floor of a room at a uniform rate. Imagine then that the time advance of the resulting movie followed the equation:
FrameNumber=A+Bsin(Ct) where “A”, “B” and “C” are appropriately chosen constants and “t” is the actual (viewer-perceived) time. In such an instance (assuming uniform temporal frame spacing), the person would seem to be walking backwards and forwards, pausing at each end of the room.]
&&&& In instances where time compression, dilation, or mathematical functional modification of the presentation rate of movie content is entertaining, useful in apprehending and understanding the movie content, or educational as regards comprehending the flow of time, available viewing environments lack one or more desirable features. Such desirable features include:
a) The ability to view clear, smooth non-distorted images all the way from single-frame stills, to motion sequences running potentially arbitrarily (tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. times) faster (in the plus or minus sense) than their standard presentation rate. Note that by “smooth”, what is meant is the lack of a (typically) brief but nevertheless intrusive freezing of the desired time progression of viewed movie image frames, due to (computer) disk access, data transfer, frame decompression time, or other such reasons.
Note that while rate-altered capture schemes and non-real-time movie regeneration methods have important uses, they do not substitute for dynamic alteration of the movie's presentation rate interactively at view time by user manipulated controls, user choice of mathematical function, music, environmental parameters (such as light-level, etc.), or other view-time-dependent input.
b) The ability to alter the frame index, frame rate, or more complex mathematical function determining frame progression, conveniently and naturally—ideally interactively—as the movie is being viewed. Input specifications for time-evolution may include:
i) Rotary dials attached to (optical or other) shaft encoders whose position determines the absolute time within the movie, the rate of time progression through the movie, or other more complex viewed-frame specification methods. Such dials could optionally include a detent that engages the standard 24-30 fps playback rate, optionally with audio.
ii) Algorithms that take music signals as inputs and generate time flows as outputs, in order to enable movie imagery to automatically “dance” to music.
iii) Pressure-sensing “drum” pads, foot-pedals, or the like, that in conjunction with (software) algorithms generate time flows as output, whereby performers may “play” movies (of images such as, for example, the rising of the sun) like a visual analog of a musical instrument.
iv) Other electro/optical-mechanical user actuator, environmental sensor, or algorithmic mechanisms and methods.
c) A modest system cost, ruggedness, and high level of user-friendliness.
Attempts have been made to build movie presentation devices that address one or more of these limitations. These include:
1) “Multimedia” Systems: (Such systems attempt to address the issues of
Requirement of Audience Attention for Significant Time Periods
and
Difficulty to Quickly Locate Information of Interest
.): In such environments movie information is typically stored in a “tree” structured fashion on a random access media such as a Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD ROM). While helping to reduce the time for a viewer to locate a movie segment-start, this solution has a number of significant disadvantages. These include one or more of:
a) Expensive production costs to design and implement such a tree-structured software environment for each presentation having new movie image content.
b) Necessity of knowing a-priori the movie indexing parameters of interest to final viewers. (Attempts have been made to create computer-automated indexing schemes. However these solutions have the drawback that they are typically extremely complex and expensive to implement, and each new indexing parameter typically requires a new indexing algorithm to be developed.)
c) Reliance on common navigation mechanisms (computer mice, touch screens, etc.) used in conventional ways (such as dragging a slider along a short linear bar) that are neither particularly suited to the applicat
Onuaku Christopher
Tran Thai
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