JPH08110912A - Device and method for retrieving moving image - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide a moving image retrieving device capable of reducing the quantity of inputted annexed information and simply changing the annexed information. CONSTITUTION: An information processing system 10 to be the moving image retrieving device is provided with a central processing unit(CPU) 1, an input device 2, an output device 3, a data base 4, a storage device 5, and a system bus 6. The data base 4 stores tree structure and annexed information. A moving image is retrieved by adopting the addition of annexed information to each node of tree structure as a prerequisite and the retrieval of a moving image scene is regarded as equivalence to the retrieval of a node in the tree structure. The tree structure holds an attribute for generally recording connection relation in each node and recording annexed information, a node name, etc. Information added to each node constituting the tree structure is succeeded in order from a top node to lower nodes. When said processing is executed before retrieval or after inputting all annexed information, the annexed information added to the tree structure can be hierarchically managed. Since the annexed information is succeeded to respective nodes of the tree structure, keyword retrieval can be executed by using a conventional retrieving method.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a moving picture search device and a moving picture search method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in moving image retrieval, a method has been proposed in which a moving image is divided into scenes, additional information is added to each moving image scene, and retrieval is performed based on the additional information.

[0003]

However, in the conventional search method, since the auxiliary information has to be input to each divided moving image scene, the amount of the additional information to be input becomes very large. Further, when changing the attached information having common contents to a plurality of moving image scenes, it is necessary to change all of the information to be changed and the attached information having common contents, which makes it difficult to change the attached information.

Therefore, the present invention utilizes the fact that the structure of a moving image scene can be conceptually handled in a tree structure, and the auxiliary information added to the moving image scene is hierarchically managed according to the tree structure to provide information common to a plurality of moving image scenes. It is an object of the present invention to provide a moving image search device and a moving image search method in which the amount of additional information to be input can be reduced and the additional information can be easily changed by sharing.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, a moving picture search device according to claim 1 of the present invention is a moving picture search device for searching a moving picture scene, wherein auxiliary information to be added to the moving picture scene, Adjunct information managing means for hierarchically managing by allocating to each node along the tree structure, reference means for referring to the adjunct information from a storage location of the adjunct information allocated to each node of the tree structure, Modifying means for modifying the referenced adjunct information for each node along the tree structure, and a storage location of adjunct information of an upper node including a specified node is added as adjunct information of the specified node, and the upper node Inheriting means for causing the specified information to be inherited to the specified node.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided the moving image retrieval apparatus according to the first aspect, wherein the attached information management means separately manages the attached information that is to be inherited and the attached information that is not to be inherited.

A moving image search device according to claim 3 is the moving image search device according to claim 1.
The moving image search device according to the present invention comprises an input means for inputting a search keyword, and a collating means for collating the input search keyword with the referenced additional information.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided the moving image search apparatus according to the third aspect, wherein the collating means performs collation from a vertex node along a tree structure.

In the moving image search device according to claim 5, the moving image search device according to claim 1 is characterized in that a plurality of search keywords are collated.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a moving image search method for searching a moving image scene, wherein the auxiliary information added to the moving image scene is hierarchically managed by allocating it to each node along a tree structure. A higher-level node that includes a designated node by referring to the attached information from the storage location of the attached information assigned to each node of the tree structure, changing the referenced attached information for each node along the tree structure The storage location of the attached information of the above is added as the attached information of the designated node, and the attached information of the upper node is inherited to the designated node.

[0011]

In the moving picture search device according to the first aspect of the present invention, when searching a moving picture scene, the additional information added to the moving picture scene is allocated to each node along the tree structure by the additional information managing means. Hierarchically managing, referring to the attached information from the storage location of the attached information allocated to each node of the tree structure by the reference means, the attached information referenced by the changing means along the tree structure Change for each node, add the storage location of the auxiliary information of the upper node including the specified node as the auxiliary information of the specified node,
The inheritance means causes the specified node to inherit the auxiliary information of the upper node.

In the moving image search device according to the third aspect, the search keyword is input by the input means, and the input search keyword and the referenced attached information are matched by the matching means.

[0013]

[Embodiments] Next, embodiments of the moving image search apparatus according to the present invention will be described. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an information processing system to which the moving image search device of this embodiment is applied.
The information processing system 10 includes a central processing unit 1, an input device 2,
It is composed of an output device 3, a database 4, a storage device 5, and a system bus 6 connecting them. The database 4 stores a tree structure and attached information. The central processing unit 1 refers to the attached information and collates the search keyword with the attached information. In addition, moving image data is recorded in the storage device 5.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a structured moving image. In the database 4, moving images structured according to a tree structure are recorded. The search for a moving image is performed on the condition that attached information is added to each node of the tree structure.

The tree structure generally records a connection relationship for each node and holds attributes for recording attached information and node names. The attached information includes the type of information (a real number, an integer, a character string, etc.), the name of the information to be added, and the content of the information to be added. The address indicating the location where the attached information is recorded is recorded in a table in each node, and the actual attached information is obtained by referring to the address of this table at the time of retrieval.

Based on the above preconditions, it is considered that searching a moving image scene is equivalent to searching a tree-structured node, and the moving image scene search will be described below.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing the management of the attached information added to the tree structure. In this embodiment, the information added to each node constituting the tree structure is inherited from the vertex node to the lower nodes in order. By performing this processing before searching or after inputting all the additional information, the additional information added to the tree structure is hierarchically managed.

The inheritance of the attached information is performed as follows. First, the operation point of the tree structure is initialized to the vertex node. Next, the operation of inheriting attached information is performed at this operating point. This operation is repeated in order from the vertex node of the tree structure,
Finally, it is executed for all nodes. In the tree structure of FIG. 2, the attached information of the node A is inherited to the child nodes B and C, and the attached information of the node B is inherited to its child nodes D and E.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing an operation routine for inheriting attached information. First, the central processing unit 1 determines whether or not there is a child node belonging to its own node (step S101). If there is a child node, the inheritance destination node of the attached information is set to the first child node (step S102).

Next, a counter ij indicating the order of the own node and the inheritance destination node in the attached information management table of each other.
(Here, i is the own node and j is the table number of the inheritance destination node) are both initialized to 0 (step S1).
03). Max each table's maximum count at the same time
I and MaxJ are set (step S104).

It is determined whether or not the counter i is less than or equal to MaxI (step S105). When it is less than or equal to MaxI, the adjunct information name is referred to from the i-th address recorded in the adjunct information management table of its own node ( Step S
106). Subsequently, it is determined whether or not the counter j is less than or equal to MaxJ (step S107), and when it is less than or equal to MaxJ, the attached information name is referred to from the jth address recorded in the attached information table of the child node (step). S108). The two attached information names referred to in step S106 and step S108 are compared (step S10).
9). If they match, the counter i is incremented by 1 and the counter j is reset to 0 (step S11).
0) to step S105 to repeat the process.

If the two attached information names do not match, the counter j of the inheritance destination node is incremented by 1 (step S111) and the process returns to step S107 to repeat the process. Further, if the counter j is larger than MaxJ in step S107, the address in which the attached information name of the own node that is being compared is recorded is added to the end of the attached information management table of the child node (step S11).
2).

On the other hand, in step S105, the counter i is set to M.
When it is larger than axI, it is considered that the attached information of the own node is inherited by all inheritance destination nodes, and it is determined whether or not a sibling node (next node) exists in the inheritance destination node (step S113). Next node (sibling node) to inheritance node
If there is, the inheritance destination node is set to the next node (step S114), and the processing from step S103 is performed. If there is no next node in the inheritance destination node in step S113, the inheritance process of the attached information ends.

By repeating the above operation, the child node inherits the attached information of the own node. After performing a series of inheritance processing of the attached information, an instruction to inherit the attached information is output to the child node. As a result, by performing the work of inheriting the attached information to the child nodes while following the tree structure, the attached information is automatically inherited in order from the vertex node to all the nodes having the child nodes.

Here, it is possible to carry out a search similar to the conventional one by performing a general keyword search process shown below on the information attached to each node. First, enter the search conditions. The search condition is the name of the attached information (eg name = A).

Next, the attached condition and the search condition are compared with respect to all the nodes managed by the tree structure management unit, and the matched node is output as the search result. When there are a plurality of search conditions, the search results are those that satisfy all of the plurality of conditions.

According to the moving image search apparatus of this embodiment, since the attached information is inherited by each node of the tree structure, the keyword search can be performed by using the search method that has been conventionally used.

[Second Embodiment] In the above-mentioned embodiment, all the information in which the names of the information attached to the nodes between the parent and the child (attached information names) do not match are inherited to the child nodes. Therefore, even if the attached information added to the node has information that the child node does not want to inherit, the information is inherited unless the information names match. Therefore, if two types of auxiliary information management tables are prepared, it is possible to separately manage the auxiliary information group to be inherited and the additional information group to be not inherited. Of the two types of tables, by inheriting the auxiliary information as in the embodiment with respect to the inheritable auxiliary information management table, it is possible to perform a search with flexible additional information.

[Third Embodiment] Further, in a state where the attached information is added to the tree structure, the attached information is inherited in order from the vertex node according to the structure of the tree structure as in the above embodiment,
An embodiment different from the above embodiment in which the address of the attached information inherited for each node is recorded in advance in the attached information management table will be described.

At the time of searching the attached information, the attached information of the search target node and the ancestor node of the target node (upper node including the node) is collated with the search keyword as the attached information of the node to be searched. FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing management of attached information added to a tree structure in another embodiment. When the attached information is managed hierarchically, the attached information of the node D in the tree structure is the node D, the node B, and the node A.
It is a combination of all the attached information of. Therefore, when collating the attached information of the node D and the search keyword, the attached information of the node D, the node B, and the node A is collated with the search keyword. The matching process with the keyword for each node is performed for all nodes.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing a search collation processing routine for referring to the attached information inherited during the search.
First, the matching point is set as the search target node (step S20).
1). Subsequently, the attached information of the node serving as the matching point is referred to (step S202), and matching is performed with the search keyword (step S203). If the collated results match, the search target node is set as the search result (step S204),
The matching process for the current search target node ends.

On the other hand, if the matching results do not match in step S203, it is determined whether or not the parent node of the node serving as the matching point exists (step S205). If the parent node exists, the matching point is set as the parent node of the matching node. (Step S206), the process returns to step 202 to repeat the process.

As described above, in the moving image search device according to the third embodiment, the attached information of the node to be searched and the nodes above it is referred to, and all the attached information is added to the searched node. Treat it like

[Fourth Embodiment] Next, a moving image search device according to a fourth embodiment will be described. In the third embodiment, when the attached information is searched, the attached information of the node to be searched is collated with the search keyword by referring to the attached information of the target node and the nodes above it. Therefore, when the process of the third embodiment is performed on all the nodes, the auxiliary information is hierarchically managed, and all the pseudo overlapping auxiliary information is searched, so that the search time becomes long. In order to solve this, matching with the search keyword is performed in order from the vertex node of the tree structure to avoid matching with duplicate information.

The auxiliary information is referred to in order from the top of the tree structure, and is collated with the search keyword, and the matching node is set as the search result. Nodes lower than the node that is the search result are naturally included in the search result because they inherit the auxiliary information of the node selected in the search result, so nodes that are lower than the node selected in the search result are not processed. Is also selected as a search result.

[Fifth Embodiment] In the third and fourth embodiments, it is assumed that a single search keyword is used.
When there are a plurality of search keywords, it has a table for checking the collation of the search keywords, and when the collation results match, the place on the table corresponding to the matched search keyword is marked as a match. When a match is confirmed for all the search keywords in this table, the search result is used.

[0037]

According to the moving image search device of the first aspect of the present invention, the attached information added to the moving image scene when the moving image scene is searched is attached to each of the tree structures along with the tree structure by the attached information managing means. Nodes are hierarchically managed, and the attached information is referred from the storage location of the attached information assigned to each node of the tree structure by the reference means, and the attached information referred to by the changing means is added to the tree. It is changed for each node according to the structure, the storage location of the auxiliary information of the upper node including the specified node is added as the additional information of the specified node, and the additional information of the upper node is added to the specified node by the inheriting means. Since it is inherited, the additional information added to the video scene is managed hierarchically in a tree structure, and the additional information that is common to multiple scenes is shared to reduce the amount of additional information to be input and to add it. It is possible to decrease the content changes the number of operations associated with the content change of the distribution. Further, it is possible to perform a keyword search that has been conventionally performed.

According to the moving image search device of the second aspect, the attached information management means separately manages the attached information to be inherited and the attached information not to be inherited.
It is possible to perform a search with flexible attached information.

According to the moving image search device of the third aspect, since the search keyword is inputted by the input means and the inputted search keyword is collated by the collating means, all the attached information is attached. Can be treated as if they were added to the search target node.

According to the moving image search device of the fourth aspect, the matching means performs matching from the vertex node along the tree structure. Therefore, matching is performed with the search keyword in order from the vertex node of the tree structure. It is possible to avoid matching with duplicate information.

According to the moving image search device of the fifth aspect, since there are a plurality of search keywords to be collated, when there is a search keyword, for example, a table for checking the collation of the search keyword is provided. The search result can be obtained when all the matching results match.

According to the moving picture search method of claim 6, in the moving picture search method for searching a moving picture scene, the auxiliary information added to the moving picture scene is hierarchically managed by allocating it to each node along a tree structure. , Referring to the attached information from the storage location of the attached information allocated to each node of the tree structure, changing the referred attached information for each node along the tree structure, and including the designated node Since the storage location of the auxiliary information of the upper node is added as the additional information of the specified node and the additional information of the upper node is inherited to the specified node, the additional information added to the moving image scene is hierarchically structured in a tree structure. By managing and sharing ancillary information common to a plurality of scenes, it is possible to reduce the amount of ancillary information to be input and the number of content change operations accompanying the content change of ancillary information. Further, it is possible to perform a keyword search that has been conventionally performed.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an information processing system to which a moving image search device of this embodiment is applied.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing management of attached information added to a tree structure.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an inheritance operation routine of attached information.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing management of attached information added to a tree structure according to another embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a search collation processing routine for referring to attached information inherited at the time of search.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a structured moving image.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 ... Central processing unit 2 ... Input device 3 ... Output device 4 ... Database 5 ... Storage device 6 ... System bus 10 ... Information processing system

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. A moving image search device for searching a moving image scene, and attached information managing means for hierarchically managing the additional information to be added to the moving image scene to each node along the tree structure, and the tree structure. Reference means for referring to the attached information from the storage location of the attached information allocated to each node of the node, changing means for changing the referred attached information for each node along the tree structure, and the designated node And a succeeding unit for adding the storage location of the additional information of the upper node including the additional information as the additional information of the specified node to inherit the additional information of the upper node to the specified node. . 2. The moving image search device according to claim 1, wherein the attached information management unit separately manages attached information that is inherited and attached information that is not inherited. 3. The moving image search apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an input unit for inputting a search keyword and a matching unit for matching the input search keyword with the referenced attached information. . 4. The moving image search device according to claim 3, wherein the matching unit performs matching from a vertex node along a tree structure. 5. The moving image search device according to claim 1, wherein there are a plurality of search keywords to be collated. 6. A moving image search method for searching a moving image scene, wherein additional information added to the moving image scene is hierarchically managed by allocating it to each node along a tree structure and assigning it to each node of the tree structure. The attached information is referred to from the attached information storage location, the attached attached information referred to is changed for each node along the tree structure, and the attached information storage location of the upper node including the designated node is stored. A moving image search method which is added as attached information of a designated node and inherits attached information of the upper node to the designated node.