WO2001043437A1

WO2001043437A1 - Multiple service programming method for video system

Info

Publication number: WO2001043437A1
Application number: PCT/IB2000/001811
Authority: WO
Inventors: Guy Moreillon; Laurent Bendel; Eric Chaubert
Original assignee: Nagravision Sa
Priority date: 1999-12-08
Filing date: 2000-12-06
Publication date: 2001-06-14
Also published as: AU1722301A

Abstract

The invention concerns a method for a programming schedule of video proposals for pay television operators wherein sequences are controlled on the screen from data such as the duration of a title and service count.

Description

MULTI-SERVICE PROGRAMMING METHOD FOR SYSTEM

VIDEO

The present invention relates to the field of video products according to the preamble of claim 1.

It is known to produce service proposal plans on demand (in English, Schedules for NVOD, where NVOD stands for Near Video On Demand) for pay television operators. However, the relatively recent nature of the development of these on-demand services in the offer offered by these operators entails drawbacks related to the volume and the tedious nature of the work to be carried out by the person responsible for the assembly, hereinafter called the user. This user is responsible for planning or even defining a video product for inclusion in a pay television offer. In the following, the concept of assembly will cover that of planning or even of definition, as we will see, according to the criteria selected. This tedious nature is linked to the heaviness of the software which is necessarily used in the prior art, such as for example Excel spreadsheets, and to the temporal adjustments between two elements of a service sequence.

The stock of video sequences generally consists of a collection of digitized image sequences, often also called the film database. These sequences may in particular consist of films or portions of films, shortened versions for commercial promotion purposes (pre-shows), reminders of elements present in the offer (post-shows). Typically pre-shows are significant or particularly captivating extracts from films, intended to give a taste to the potential viewer. In a cassette or video tape sold on a store shelf in plastic packaging, the main selling element for this cassette or tape, also called title, can for example be a cartoon. The editor of the cassette, knowing that the target audience is in a certain age group, will generally include before the start of the title of the extracts on the latest news from the house in the area of cartoons. At the end of the title, he will place extracts preferably consisting of portions of films that may also interest certain portions of the target audience.

It is more and more the same in the field of pay television. A viewer seated at home can choose to watch a given film which starts cyclically at a fixed time interval, for example every quarter of an hour. If he turns on his station a few minutes before the start of a start-up, the pay television operator prefers to furnish these few minutes by presenting him the extracts associated with the film chosen, to keep him informed of the offer, rather than leave the screen blank. These extracts or assets are therefore part of the proposed film, either as extracts before or after the title, or as a filling. A filling consists of materials such as title presentation, promotional offer or title extracts. We will name for the rest of the request these different modules extracts. Several extracts can fill a filling. In the following, and particularly in the examples, a distinction will essentially be made between title and filling (abbreviated title and filler).

The appearance of the concept of multi-services has changed the work of the operators in charge of composing television programs. According to the usual system, a television program is composed in a linear manner, each program naturally following the end of another. The advent of the multi-service offer has completely changed this concept because the end user no longer chooses a service which corresponds to a chain, but chooses a program. The task of selecting the video service on which the chosen program is broadcast is the responsibility of the decoder. This is particularly important when buying programs that are broadcast cyclically at regular intervals on several services. This is where the concept of title and infill takes on its full meaning. For the offer to be easy of access for the end user, it is important that the time difference between the different start of the title is according to a time interval in round numbers, for example every fifteen minutes. Thus, the potential client can easily memorize this sequence and will know that every quarter, he can view the title offered. To obtain this offset with a title of 85 minutes duration for example, it is necessary to bridge the duration until the next quarter, in our example, up to 90 minutes. This time is filled by filling.

According to known methods, the operator in charge of composing a broadcast broadcast on several services in offset mode, will compose each service individually, by calculating the offsets between services manually. This composition will be tedious and any modification of one of the parameters, for example the difference between each start, causes the complete calculation from the start of the set.

The aim of the present invention is to propose a tool which allows the operator to dynamically compose a multi-service broadcast with offset broadcasting.

This goal is fully achieved by a multi-service programming method comprising for each service at least one title, characterized in that it comprises the steps of:

- select the number of services available, the total broadcasting time and the duration of the title

- calculate a user-friendly lag time between departments and the duration of filling between each ticket - store the data thus generated in the system database.

The term user-friendly offset duration is understood to mean a duration in a round number that is easy to remember by the end user, that is to say an entire division of the hour. These durations are generally 15 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. In a particular embodiment of the invention, the operator building the video product works on a computer screen, in parallel with other interfaces including in particular a computer keyboard and a mouse. Thanks to the method according to the invention, the user can very easily build, from a reserve of video sequences, an optimized product directly usable by a pay television operator.

In a particular embodiment of the invention, the method presents, for example on a part of the screen, a first version or form, said to be reduced or even synthetic, of the video product under construction. It was found that it is on this version or form that the operator's productivity is highest during the construction of the product. For a more meaningful or more expressive visualization of the result, the software also offers, for example on another part of the screen, a second version or form of the product, called synoptic, in which the space on the screen is less poorly assigned. This version or form is preferably used during the final validation, by the prescriber or client, of the product once it is finished.

In a particular embodiment of the invention, dependent on the previous one, the two versions or forms are presented in windows, one of which can be hidden according to the choice of the user for better productivity.

In a particular embodiment of the invention, the manipulations on the screen are preferably done using a computer mouse. This includes in particular, and in a manner known per se, the clicking on voting buttons (in English, voting buttons), for example aligned vertically on a menu on the screen.

According to a variant of the invention, the tool available to the operator makes it possible to determine not only the duration of the filling but also, the content of the filling itself. This is possible taking into account the genre of the title and to select a filling content according to the genre of the title. It is Obviously if the title is a cartoon, the filling will be occupied by the presentation of the other cartoons that the broadcaster plans to transmit.

Finally, according to the method of the invention, the resulting data is stored in a system database which contains all of the parameters defining the video products offered by the broadcaster. This base is usually divided into two parts, one called off-line serving for the preparation of the broadcast and the other called on-line serving for the actual broadcast. From this base are drawn the parameters which will control the various equipment making up the broadcasting chain.

The present invention also extends to a computer program performing the method described above. This program enters the necessary parameters, namely the number of services, the total broadcasting time and the duration of the title. Note that this last parameter is not entered manually but is the consequence of the operator's selection of the title to be broadcast. For each title, a set of parameters are associated including duration and genre.

The program establishes the optimal shift time as well as the filling time in order to obtain an easily remembered shift time, for example every 20 minutes.

Once accepted by the operator, this program generates the data describing the services destined for the system database.

The invention will be better understood in the light of the detailed description which follows, in relation to the appended drawings in which:

FIG. 1 shows a general diagram of the context in which the method according to the invention applies;

- Figure 2 shows a first example of a video proposal plan, in which the duration of the title is one hour, and the number of services is six; FIG. 3 shows a second example in which the duration of the title is one hour and ten minutes and the number of services is five;

FIG. 4 shows a third example in which the duration of the ticket is one hour, the number of services being three;

- Figure 5 shows a fourth example in which three titles are offered, an example of a broadcast showing the duration of the title of one hour forty-five minutes, the corresponding number of services being two;

FIG. 6 is similar to the previous example, the digital data this time being selected on the second block showing the duration of the ticket which is one hour, the number of services being four.

Figure 1 shows how the method works in the general context of a pay television system. Proposal plans, or schedules, are assembled by operators 1, 2 by method 4 according to the invention. Alternatively, a third-party operator 3 can assemble a proposal plan file 5, one of the attributes of which is to make a description D of the video sequences conveyed by a stream or stream S3 to a multiplexer 7. The products generated by the operators 1, 2 using method 4 are also table files 5, not shown in FIG. 1 for the sake of simplicity, which are then managed by an information management system 8. The files 5 created by the third-party user 3 are imported, via a plan importer 6, to the same information management system 8. This in turn communicates:

- with a System Information block 9, one of whose tasks is also to provide a description D of the video sequences conveyed by the stream or stream S3, but above all to supply the multiplexer 7 with a stream or data stream S1;

- With a media server 10 which will deliver video sequences to the multiplexer 7 via a stream S2; - with a plan navigator (schedule navigator) 11 used by a control room operator 12.

This plan navigator 11 makes it possible to view the plan of proposals. It also allows, incidentally, to stop the server. A jammer 13 is coupled to the multiplexer 7, in order to deliver encrypted streams or streams S4 for broadcasting on various media, reception then decryption by descramblers (not shown) present at the subscribers of the system.

Figures 2 to 6 all give examples of NVOD proposal plans as developed by the method according to the invention, as resulting from the variation of various parameters such as duration of the title, number of services (service count in English) , shift between two services or time shift. These figures are computer screen images showing two windows:

- one, with a dark background, is graduated in days for the abscissa, the period represented being the week from November 25, 1999 to December 3, 1999; it is represented on the ordinate six lines 401 to 406, denoted NVOD10 to

NVOD15 which represent the six simulcast services;

- the other, with a light background, represents a brick wall, the length of a brick representing the duration of the title. When the wall is perforated, there is a gap called filling as defined above. This brick wall, as we will see, is much easier to handle by the user sitting in front of his screen and operating his computer mouse. The main manipulation instrument is a set of two cursors, represented by black triangles in Figures 2 to 6. One of these two cursors, moving vertically, points at the bottom of the brick wall. When it is moved down, for example with the help of the mouse, the number of layers of bricks, in other words of services, increases. We check in the examples that at any time, the number of brick stacks corresponds to the number of services as displayed in a "service count" field. The other cursor, moving horizontally, sets the offset in time, or "Time shift", between two consecutive services. The duration of the title is, on the contrary, determined by the number and nature of the image sequences.

FIG. 2 represents a first example in which a multi-service broadcasting block, paradoxically named "Untitled 0", is displayed in the viewing window as a rectangle extending on the abscissa over two days, and on the ordinate over the six services available. The viewing window provides the prescriber with a macroscopic view of the offer, without details. On the contrary, the construction window, located under the viewing window, provides details to the user. In the example in Figure 2, the title for one hour, the shift or time shift will be exactly equal to the quotient of one hour by six, or 10 minutes. In other words, in no case will a viewer wait more than 10 minutes for the start of his film. The duration of the filling is zero, and the periodicity, calculated as the sum of the durations of the title and the filling, is also equal to one hour.

The right part of the construction window gives the day and time of first and last broadcast, the broadcast duration by difference between these two dates, and the total number of scheduled broadcasts.

Figure 3 shows an example where the number of services is reduced to five, always for a single title called "Untitled 0". In the display window, only line 406 is unoccupied.

The construction window shows the details of the sequence of services. As the duration of the title is one hour and ten minutes, if we want to limit the time lag, or even the maximum waiting time between two services to a quarter of an hour, we will have a gap, occupied by a filling, d '' a duration of five minutes between two broadcasts on the same line in the display window, or on the same row of bricks in the construction window. The brick wall is slightly openwork here. FIG. 4 represents a final example of programming a title, but with only three service lines. We see on the viewing window that the rectangle representing this title leaves half of the lines free, which makes it possible to add a second title to the offer, as we will see below. The construction window gives the user of the method the parameters resulting from the choices made: an offset of twenty-five minutes for a title lasting one hour, and a gap of fifteen minutes.

FIG. 5 shows an example where three video sequences or titles named "Untitled" and numbered respectively 0, 2 and 4 according to the diagram of the three previous examples, are inserted in the viewing window. It can be seen in this window that the title "Untitled 0", for example as resulting from the construction described in connection with FIG. 3 which programmed it for November 26 and 27, has simply been shifted in time, to November 28 and 29 1999.

It is the title "Untitled 4" whose details are this time provided by the construction window of figure 5. With a title duration of one hour and forty-five, and a number of services of only two, the offset climbs to fifty-five minutes, or half the frequency of an hour and a half.

The viewing window of FIG. 6 is identical to that of FIG. 5, because we are talking here of the same video product obtained by the method according to this embodiment of the invention. The construction window of Figure 6 shows the details of the title "Untitled 2". As the number of services (lines for the display window, rows of bricks for the construction window) is four, and since the duration of the title is one hour, the offset will be fifteen minutes, and the duration of the filling nothing. Note that on the viewing window, intended to give a synthetic view for example to the specifier such as a pay TV operator, the width of the titles "Untitled 2" and "Untitled 4" is the same because it is not interesting to know, in macroscopic programming, that one of the video sequences is almost twice as long as the other. These features appear in the construction window for example with a simple mouse click inside the rectangle represented in the viewing window.

Claims

1. Multi-service programming method for video system comprising for each service at least one title, characterized in that it consists of:

- select a number of available services, a total broadcast duration and a title including parameters such as duration, genre

- calculate a user-friendly difference between services and the duration of filling between each ticket

- generate data relating to each service to a system database.

2. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that it consists in selecting the content of the filling in accordance with the genre of the title.

3. Method according to claims 1 and 2, characterized in that it consists in repeating all or part of the contents of the filling until the complete duration of the filling.

4. Computer software for establishing a multiservice video program consisting in entering the total duration of the video program, the number of services and the title, the latter being characterized by at least one duration and one genre, calculating the user-friendly offset between service and the duration of filling between each title, to generate the data relating to each service and to store them in a system database.

5. Computer software according to claim 4, characterized in that it offers a filling content in accordance with the genre of the title.