Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1997-10-31
2001-01-16
Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2776)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C345S215000, C709S217000, C709S218000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06175840
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Technical Field
The present invention relates to information processing of computer networks, more specifically, to a method for indicting the location of video hot links.
Prior Art
Hypermedia is a term used to describe the fusion of two other new technologies: multimedia and hypertext. Multimedia refers to information forms containing text, image, graphics, audio and video. A hypertext document is one which is linked to other documents via hyperlinks. A hyperlink often appears in a hypertext document as a piece of highlighted text. The text is usually a word or phrase describing something of which a user might want further information. When the user activates the hyperlink, typically by clicking on it using a mouse, the user view is changed so as to show the linked document, which typically contains more information on the highlighted word or phrase concerned. Hyperlinks make it easy to follow cross-references between documents. Hypermedia documents are hypertext documents with multimedia capabilities. The regions on the screen which are active hyperlinks are called hot-links.
Nowadays, most people are familiar with the application of hypertext by using a mouse to click on hot-links on computer displays of homepages from the World Wide Web (the Web) on the Internet. Data on the Web is located via URLs. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is a draft standard for specifying an object on the Internet. It specifies access method and the location for the files. Documents on the Web are written in a simple markup language called HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. File formats of data on the Web are specified as MIME formats; MIME stands for “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions”. (Reference: http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/MIME/MIME.html). Examples of File formats on the Web are .au (probably the most common audio format), .html (HTML files), .jpg (JPEG encoded images), .mid (Midi music format), .mpg (MPEG encoded video), and .ps (postscript files).
While presently hypertext technology is most common in text and image media, it is beginning to also appear in animation and video. HyperVideo is the name for video augmented with hyperlinks. NEC corporation has demonstrated to Newsbytes such a system, named video hypermedia system, that will bring the point and click capabilities of hypertext to full motion video (NEC's Video Hypertext System, Newsbytes News Network, Jul. 31, 1995.).
HyperCafe is an experimental hypermedia prototype, developed as an illustration of a general hypervideo system (Nitin “Nick” Sawhney, David Balcom and Ian Smith, HyperCafe: Narrative and Aesthetic Properties of Hypervideo, Hypertext 96: Seventh ACM Conference on Hypertext (Recipient of the first Engelbart Best Paper Award at Hypertext 96, Mar. 20, 1996), http://silver. skiles. gatech. edu/gallery/hyper cafe/HT
96_Talk/). This program places the user in a virtual cafe, composed primarily of digital video clips of actors involved in fictional conversations in the cafe. Hypercafe allows the user to follow different conversations, and offers dynamic opportunities of interaction via temporal, spatio-temporal and textual links to present alternative narratives.
VideoActive is an authoring tool for the creation of interactive movies (HyperVideo Authoring Tool (User Notes), http://ephyx.com/, Pre-Release version, Feb. 1996). It uses the HyperVideo technology to include hot-links in digital video files. The tool allows one to prepare video clips with the hot-link information and then to link them with other types of media.
Hot links in hypertext files are highlighted presently by way of color variation. When normal hypertexts are black, for instance, the hypertexts containing hot links are of another color (e.g. blue). In this way, the users can learn whether there exists a hot link in the hypertexts through changes of the colors. However, color is an important information in other hypermedia (image and video) files, hence the user might get a distorted image and video if the same method as mentioned above were still used to indicate whether there exist hot links in the image and video files. In case that there is a red flower in a certain frame of a video, for instance, the information contained in the video itself will evidently distorted if the hot link on the red flower is indicated directly by way of color variation. Therefore, it is undesirable to directly adopt the method of color variation in hypermedia (such as video) files. In the current hypervideo demo systems, the mouse cursor is often moved into a video display window and is moved around continuously within the window to find out whether there exist hot links in the video. For instance, when the cursor shape changes, it shows that there is a hot link. The method for seeking hot links contained in the video by way of mouse cursor's roaming within the video window is very inconvenient.
The objective of the invention is to provide a method for indicating the location of time dependent video hot links to a user, including the method for indicating the presence and the location of a hot link.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for indicating the location of time dependent video hot links to a user, comprising the steps of: displaying a motion video presentation on a first portion of a display device, the device presentation including a hot link region which can be selected by a user to link to different content; displaying an indication of the presence of the hot link region in the video presentation.
The method of the invention may comprise the further step of altering a visual attribute of at least a portion of the hot link region when a user manipulable cursor is within the first portion.
The method of the invention may comprise the further step of displaying an indication of the presence of the hot link region in the video presentation on a second portion of the display screen.
With the method of the present invention, it is possible to indicate the presence and location of a hot link without mouse cursor roaming or intrusion of the active video window. That is to say, a user can view in a non-intrusive mode while he can get the information about the presence and the corresponding location (if present) of a hot link.
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Chen Jeane
Feig Ephraim
Zhang Liang Jie
Bashore William L.
Hong Stephen S.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Morris, Esq. Daniel P.
Scully Scott Murphy & Presser
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