JPH06149647A - Multi-media file managing system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To shorten the processing time of file access in a data base system for processing a multi-media in respect to a multi-media file managing system for processing the data of the multi-media. CONSTITUTION:The multi-media file management system is provided with a text file 1 for storing data such as characters and numerals and management data and a multi-media file 2 for storing multi-media data such as voice, still images and moving images. At the time of generating an access request to the data of each medium, both the files 1, 2 are opened, the storing position and sort of data to be accessed are retrieved based upon management data 1a, either one of the files 1, 2 corresponding to the retrieved sort is accessed, and after ending the accessing processing, the opened files 1, 2 are closed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a multimedia file management system. Although a database system for handling multimedia data has come to be realized, data to be handled includes characters, numbers, still images, moving images, voices, etc., and these data must be managed on a file. However, the conventional method cannot efficiently manage the files of various kinds of multimedia data, and therefore improvement thereof is desired.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There are two conventional methods for managing multimedia data on a file, which will be described as a conventional example 1 and a conventional example 2.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory view of the conventional example 1, and FIG. 7 is a conventional example 2
FIG. A. of FIG. Represents the target multimedia database model. In this example, the database stores three character data, character-1 to character-3, and two numeric data, numeric-1 and numeric-2. , Still image data is one of still image-1 and still image-2, and moving image data is one of moving image-1. That is, each data is stored in this database.

In the case of managing such data on a file, in the case of the conventional example 1, B. The file structure is as shown in. That is, one file F1 is managed by a structure in which character, numerical value, still image, and moving image data of each medium are mixed, and when accessing one of these data,
It is possible to access by opening the file F1 and searching for one data in the target medium from a plurality of data in each medium.

On the other hand, in the case of the conventional example 2, FIG. The database model of FIG. Is the same as
The file structure is shown in FIG. As shown in, a file F1 in which characters and numerical values are stored and a file F2 for still image-1 are
File F3 for audio-1 and file F4 for video-1
And a file F5 for still image-2, which is managed as a separate file corresponding to each data of the media, and one file is added when the data of voice, still image, moving image, etc. is newly added. Is used. For accessing the files F2 to F5, pointers indicating the positions of the files F2 to F5 are stored in the file F1 and the pointers can be used to access.

[0006]

According to the method of the conventional example 1 described above, data of a relatively small capacity such as text data (characters, numerical values) and multimedia data (still image, moving image, audio) are used. Since each data contains a large amount of data, the search process will take a long time if you want to access only character or numerical data.

A conventional method 2 shown in FIG.
However, each time multimedia data increases,
There was a problem that the number of files increased. for that reason,
When performing a process of accessing a plurality of multimedia data, a procedure of an open (OPEN) process, a process of reading and writing, and a process of a close (CLOSE) process are executed for each of the plurality of files. Therefore, there is a problem that it takes a lot of time to process a plurality of files.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a multimedia file management system capable of shortening file processing time in a database system handling multimedia.

[0009]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the principle of the present invention. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 is a management data 1a for all files (text files and multimedia files) and a text file storing character and numerical data 1b, and 2 is data 2a such as audio, still image, and moving image.
Is a multimedia file for storing a file, 3 is a file management unit, and 4 is a memory.

In the file management unit 3, 3a is a file opening means, 3b is a file searching means, 3c is a file access processing means, and 3d is a file closing means.

The present invention provides two files as a multimedia data file, a text file for storing character and numerical data and management data and a multimedia file for storing voice, still image and moving image data.
Even a plurality of multimedia data can be accessed by performing only one open process.

[0012]

In FIG. 1, when a file access request is issued, the file management unit 3 is activated, and the file opening means 3a first operates to open the text file 1 and the multimedia file 2. After that, the type (including pointer) of the target data for which access is requested is detected by the file search means 3b.

In this retrieval, the management data 1a of the text file 1 is extracted and becomes the target when reading the file, although it depends on the type of access such as reading (loading) the file or writing (saving) the file. The type of data is detected, it is discriminated whether it is text data (character, numerical value) or other multimedia data (voice, still image, moving image) and the pointer is detected. When writing a file, management data (type and pointer) of the file to be written set in the memory 4
To detect.

Next, the file access processing means 3c uses the retrieved data type and pointer to perform processing. At this time, if the data type is character or numeric data, the corresponding pointer of the text file 1 is accessed to read to the memory 4, write from the memory 4, etc., and the data type is voice or static. In the case of multimedia such as images and moving images, the multimedia file 2 is accessed and the access processing is similarly performed. When these processes are completed, the file closing means 3d causes
A process of closing the open text file 1 and multimedia file 2 is performed.

In this way, the file is divided into the text data of characters and numerical values and the multimedia data of voices, still images, and moving images to speed up the processing of the text data and to open the multimedia data once. With this, data on multiple media can be accessed any number of times, and the processing efficiency can be improved.

[0016]

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention. Figure 2
In the figure, 10 is a processing unit (CPU and memory), 11
Is an operating system (OS), 12 is an application program, 13 is a work memory area, 1
4 is a bus, 15 is a file storage device such as a magnetic disk,
Reference numeral 16 is a text file, and 17 is a multimedia file.

The file storage device 15 includes a text file 16 containing characters, numerical values and management data according to the present invention.
Also, the multimedia file 17 is stored as another file, and the processing device 10 and the file storage device 15 constitute a multimedia database.

A processing request for accessing a file by an application program 12 in the processing device 10 is in the form of a command, which is an operating system (OS) 11
Is supplied to the OS 11, the OS 11
Executes the process specified by the command. Then O
S11 uses the work memory area 13 for storing the data transferred to and from the file storage device 15. The work memory area 13 can be accessed by the program 12 to transfer data.

As shown in the figure, the text file 16 is provided with a management area 160, in which the file type (text file or text file 16 or multimedia file 17 corresponding to each data stored in the multimedia file 17 is stored). Management data a to e such as multimedia files) and pointers (data storage addresses in files)
Is stored.

In this example, the data representing the multimedia file 17 and the pointer of the area 171 are set in the management data a in the management area 160, and the audio is stored at the position indicated by the corresponding pointer in the multimedia file 17. The data, voice-1, is stored. Further, the management data b stores a pointer indicating the area 163 of the text file 16, and character-3, which is character data, is stored at the corresponding position. Similarly, the management data c is still image data of the multimedia file 17 (still image-1).
Area 170 of the character file (character-2) of the text file 16
A pointer pointing to 2 and a pointer pointing to an area 161 of the character data (character-1) of the text file 16 are stored.

FIG. 3 is a configuration diagram of data arrangement in the work memory area. The work memory area (13 in Fig. 2) is
Load file data from file storage device 15 (L
It is used when performing some kind of operation on a file, such as OAD: reading) or saving (SAVE: writing) file data to the file storage device 15. The management area 130 in this has the same structure as the management area 160 of the text file 16 in FIG. 2, and a plurality of management data (a), (b), (c) ... A pointer (including the type of file data) in the memory area of each file data stored in the area 13 is stored corresponding to each file data. In this example, (a), (b), (c) ... Stores the management data of each file data of character-1, numerical value-1, still image-1.

Save (write), which is the main function in the multimedia database provided with the text file 16 and the multimedia file 17 as described above
The processing of loading and reading will be described below.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart of save processing. This processing is executed by the OS when saving (writing) file data (including management area) previously written in the work memory area (13 and FIG. 3) of the processing device to the database (file storage device 15). It is executed as an intermediary.

When the save process is started by the request of the program of the application, the text file and the multimedia file are opened (4 in FIG. 4).
0). Next, initial processing (clearing the buffer related to save, setting various parameters, etc.) is performed (see 4
1) The loop processing is started. Here, the pointer information (including the type of file data) in the management area in the work memory area (hereinafter referred to as memory) is discriminated (see
2) Identify whether or not the data is text (characters, numerical values) (at 43). Here, if it is text data,
The data in the memory is saved in the text file (16 in FIG. 2) (44) and the pointer information (address in the text file) is written in the management area (160 in FIG. 2) of the text file (45 in FIG. 4). .

When the data is not text (sound, still image, moving image), the data in the memory is saved in the multimedia file (17 in FIG. 2) (46) and the management area of the text file (16 in FIG. 2). The pointer information of the saved file data is written in (160 in FIG. 2) (47 in FIG. 4). After that, the loop processing of steps 42 to 47 is repeated according to the number of file data to be saved, and when all the saves are completed, two of the text file and the multimedia file are closed (step 48). ， End the save process.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart of the load process. This process is a process of reading the requested file from the database (file storage device 15) and writing it in the memory (work memory area).

When the loading process is started by the request of the program of the application, the text file and the multimedia file are opened (5 in FIG. 5).
0). Next, a text file management area (16 in FIG. 2)
0) is loaded into the memory (51 in FIG. 5) and initial processing is performed (52). After that, the processing shifts to loop processing, the pointer information (including the type of file data) in the loaded management area is extracted (at step 53), and it is determined whether the data is text (character, numerical value) based on the information. (Same as 5
4).

When the data is text, the file data in the text file (16 in FIG. 2) is loaded into the memory (55 in FIG. 5) and the management area (13 in FIG. 3) in the memory is loaded.
0) is the address where the file data was loaded,
It is written as pointer information (at step 56). When the data is multimedia (audio, still image, moving image) instead of text, the data in the multimedia file is loaded into the memory (57), and the management area in the memory (130 in FIG. 3) stores the memory. The address is written as pointer information (58). After that, the loop processing of the above steps 53 to 58 is repeated for all the file data to be loaded, and finally two of the text file and the multimedia are closed (at 59), and the loading processing ends. To do.

[0029]

According to the present invention, in a database containing multimedia data such as characters, numerical values, voices, still images and moving images, a text file containing character and numerical data and other audio, still images and moving images. File management can be efficiently performed by separately accessing a multimedia file including data such as the above. In particular, by dividing it into a text file and a multimedia file, not only the search processing of text data (characters, numerical values) is speeded up, but also the search processing of multimedia data (still images, audio, moving images) is also fast. Can be converted.

Further, when saving and loading a plurality of multimedia data, the number of times the file is opened and closed is reduced, so that the processing time can be shortened.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a principle configuration diagram of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a configuration diagram of data arrangement in a work memory area.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart of save processing according to the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart of a loading process according to the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of Conventional Example 1.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of Conventional Example 2.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Text File 1a Management Data 1b Character and Numerical Data 2 Multimedia File 2a Audio, Still Image, Video, etc. Data 3 File Management Unit 3a File Opening Means 3b File Searching Means 3c File Access Processing Means 3d File Closing Means 4 Memory

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a multimedia file management method for handling multimedia data, a text file for storing character and numerical data and management data, and a multimedia file for storing multimedia data such as voice, still image and moving image. When a request is made to access the data of each medium, both the text file and the multimedia file are opened, and the storage location and type of the data to be accessed are searched based on the management data and searched. A multimedia file management method, characterized in that access processing is performed to one of the text file or multimedia file corresponding to the specified type, and the opened file is closed after the processing is completed.