AU2008200542A1

AU2008200542A1 - Music Harvesting System

Info

Publication number: AU2008200542A1
Application number: AU2008200542A
Authority: AU
Inventors: Peter Samuel Vogel
Original assignee: VOGEL ROSS Pty Ltd
Current assignee: VOGEL ROSS Pty Ltd
Priority date: 2007-02-01
Filing date: 2008-02-06
Publication date: 2008-08-21

Description

00 0 MUSIC HARVESTING

SYSTEM

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to systems for creating music files from radio or television broadcasts.

OBACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION N 10 Listening to music on digital portable player devices has become very popular over 00 0recent years. To maximise the number of songs that can be stored in portable N devices, various compression schemes have been developed, the most popular formats being AAC, WMA and MP3. With players now able to store many thousands of songs, users are keen to find ways of obtaining songs easily and inexpensively.

To this end, songs are typically ripped from CDs, purchased form online stores, or downloaded from other people's computers through peer-to-peer networks.

Obtaining songs by ripping CDs is time consuming and expensive. Purchasing from online stores is more convenient but still costly. Peer-to-peer downloading is generally free but typically breaches copyright.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of this invention to provide a system for harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts.

In one aspect, the present invention provides a method of creating individual media files from recorded broadcasts comprising the steps of recording a broadcast program, receiving identifying information indexing at least one section of said recording and creating a new recording containing only said identified section.

Preferably, said new recording is labeled according to said identifying information.

In another aspect, the invention provides a method of creating individual media 00 files from recorded broadcasts comprising the steps of selecting desired content CI from a menu of available content; identifying a likely broadcast source for the aselected content; tuning a receiving device to the identified broadcast source; 5 recording a broadcast program, receiving identifying information indexing the

IND

section of said recording corresponding to said desired content; and creating a new recording containing only said identified section. Preferably, the new recording is identified by its corresponding name.

oO N 10 In some embodiments of the invention, the identifying information is provided by a 00 user making a manual selection. For example, a user marks the start and end CI points of a song within a recorded TV show, assigns a name, presses a "save" button, and the segment marked is saved as a new file with the assigned name.

In another embodiment of the invention, the identifying information is provided by a remote data server. For example, the start and end point of each song within a "video hits" or "MTV" style show is identified by a person at a central monitoring station. This information is fetched by a user's digital video recorder (DVR) when replaying the show and when the viewer using the DVR hits the "save" button, a file containing the currently-playing clip is saved to the DVR's hard drive, named according to the song title.

In another embodiment, the identifying information is provided automatically, for example being embedded within the broadcast.

The invention can be applied to audio or audio-visual programs. In some embodiments both the audio and video components of an audio-visual show are saved to create a new audio-visual file; in other embodiments only the audio portion is saved. In the latter case music files can be created from a music video show, sound-only interviews can be created from television interviews, and so on.

In some embodiments, software is provided to transcode audio or video content into a different format when the new file is made. This is useful, for example, for making MP3 files from a TV show that may have been stored for example as a 0 DVR-MS television recording by a media center PC.

(Ni In another aspect, the invention provides a method of creating individual media files from recorded broadcasts comprising the steps of selecting desired content Sfrom a menu of available content; identifying a likely broadcast source for the selected content; tuning a receiving device to the identified broadcast source; recording a broadcast program, receiving identifying information indexing the section of said recording corresponding to said desired content; and creating a new N 10 recording containing only said identified section. Preferably, the new recording is 00 0identified by its corresponding name.

The invention also consists in recording means adapted to execute the steps of the inventive method described above.

PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION An embodiment of the invention will now be described with reference to block diagram Fig. 1.

Referring now to Fig. 1, a home user accesses the invention through a suitablyadapted digital video recorder DVR 2. In this example, the user has pressed the "Guide" button on remote control 3. DVR 2 is connected to Internet 6 through which it requests the guide web page from server 7, which it displays on TV monitor 4.

The guide web page is created by an operator at workstation 8 who enters a menu of songs which are very popular and likely to be broadcast in coming days.

The home user moves a cursor up and down the menu of songs showing on TV monitor 4 and selects the ones they would like to harvest by pressing "record" on remote control 3 when they are cursored. In this example, this causes a dot to be displayed to the left of the songs so selected.

Receivers 9, 10, 11 are television tuners which receive broadcasts through antenna 12. In practice there are more than three such receivers, preferably enough to record all available channels. The received programs are stored in disk files on server 7 along with timestamps indicating the time and date of broadcast, N as well as other information such as channel, program name etc. At some time ,_during or after the broadcast, the operator reviews the recordings and identifies programs which contain songs that relates to the titles included in the previouslyprepared menu of songs. The operator uses workstation 8 to mark the start and end points of the each relevant song and data is written to a database on server 7 ,N including the time and date of the start and end points, broadcast channel and Cterritory, name of song, artist and any other information that may be desired.

N 00 Software which forms part of the invention, running in DVR 2, periodically scans N the list of harvesting requests and checks whether anything is marked as requested but not yet processed. In this example, such requests are pending so a query is sent through Internet 6 to the database on server 7, requesting data corresponding to "Don't give up" and "Funky tonight". If a match is found, server 7 returns a data packet including the channel and time of the relevant broadcast, as well as pointers to the start and end time of the requested song. The software in DVR 2 then checks whether a recording of that channel was made at that time, and if so the data packet is used to create a new file for each available song, copy the relevant section of the recorded audio to the new file, and attach appropriate identifying metadata.

In some embodiments the audio is also transcoded in the process, for example from recorded DVR-MS format used by Microsoft DVRs, into the AAC format used by the Apple iPod. The resulting AAC music file in this example is also imported into Itunes and when portable media player PMP 5 (such as an iPod) is connected to DVR 2, the music is transferred to it.

Once a song has been successfully harvested, a musical symbol is displayed next to its name on the menu in place of the dot displayed previously.

The invention can be further enhanced so that if the database on server 7 indicates that a song requested for harvesting has been broadcast, however that particular recording is not found on the DVR's hard drive, recording of the show in which the song was found is automatically scheduled. This is useful in cases where the same show may be repeated later, or where the show is not repeated but future episodes N may also include the requested song.

Another extension of this embodiment of the invention provides a "harvest now" function which can be invoked while playing back a recording of a TV show. For example, a viewer decides to watch a recorded MTV show. He selects the N recording from his library of recordings in the usual manner and presses "Play". As well as playing the recording, the DVR queries server 7 to discover whether any N 10 indexing information is available for this particular show. If it is, an icon is displayed 00 in the corner of the picture to alert the viewer. If the viewer presses "record" at any N time during playback of the show, the invention causes a music file to be harvested according to the method described previously. That is, the start and end points of the song currently in progress are ascertained from the database and an MP3, AAC, WMA or other suitable file is created, and named according to the retrieved name data.

It will be understood that while the invention is described herein with reference to particular embodiments, these are presented by way of example only, and many variations can be made without departing from the scope of the invention.

Whereas the invention described in the foregoing embodiments utilises a DVR and TV display to select content to be harvested, it will of course be obvious to those skilled in the art that the invention can be implemented in many other ways. For example the invention can be implemented as software running on a personal computer and a web browser used to select desired material.

Furthermore the logic of the invention can be implemented in the user's home device, or it can be implemented on a remote server.

Whereas the invention is described in relation to harvesting music from television broadcasts, the invention can also be used to harvest video clips from television broadcasts, harvest songs from within longer radio broadcasts, and so on.

Because sound recordings require very little storage space compared to video, a 00 variation of the invention can be beneficially implemented in which one or more cN radio broadcasts are continuously recorded at the user's premises for subsequent ,.harvesting. In this case the user might tune the radio receiver to their favourite station and leave the invention running for a day or more. In this case receivers 9, 10,11 are radio receivers, the broadcasts are in due course indexed at workstation 8 and the menu created on server 7. When the user presses the "guide" button on remote control 3 the menu relevant to their chosen station appears and when they click the "record" button the selected songs are immediately harvested.

N 00 While the embodiments described herein anticipate the broadcasts being recorded c, off-air, the invention can also be implemented by recording programs from streaming Internet sources such as Internet radio or TV stations, off cable or satellite, or from many other sources.

Although the embodiments of the invention described above refer to harvesting by selecting individual titles, the invention can also be adapted to facilitate harvesting by other criteria. For example, the user could request all songs of a particular genre, by a favourite artist, and so on. It is also beneficial to offer the option of harvesting the most popular songs, such as the "top 50", or all songs broadcast on a particular station etc.

The method used to index content can also be varied without departing from the scope of the invention. Although the exemplary embodiments employ human operators for this task, it is anticipated that this process can be automated, for example by referring to radio station playlists, intelligent processing of the broadcast, monitoring closed captions or subtitles, decoding the system information data within a digital broadcast, and so forth. It is also possible to implement a community system of indexing whereby users of the invention manually "mark up" or identify content within shows they have recorded, and this data is shared with other users on a peer-to-peer basis or though a central server.

Whereas the embodiments described herein describe the process of the invention as creating the harvested content in the form of new, separate files, it is also 00 possible to practise the invention without actually creating new files. Instead, the 00 0 indexing information is used to create "virtual files" by providing pointers into the N original recording. This can have the advantage of using less disk space in cases ,_where the original recording is to be saved as well as the harvested results.

00

Claims

3. A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claim 1 wherein the step of recording a broadcast program comprises the sub-steps of: selecting desired content from a menu of available content; identifying a likely broadcast source for the selected content; tuning a receiving device to the identified broadcast source; and recording a broadcast program.
4. A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claim 1-3 in which the identifying information is provided by a person making a manual selection. A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claim 1-3 in which the step of receiving identifying information indexing at least one section of said recording comprises the sub-steps of: marking the start and end points of a song within a recorded TV show; entering a name to be assigned to the song; and saving the segment marked as a file associated with the assigned name.
6. A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claim 1-3 in which the step of receiving identifying information 00 indexing at least one section of said recording comprises the sub-step of 0 receiving identifying information from a remote data server. (N A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claim 1-3 in which the step of receiving identifying information indexing at least one section of said recording comprises the sub-step of extracting identifying information from within the broadcast.
8. A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claim 6 in which the start and end point of discrete items within 00 a broadcast is identified by a person at a central monitoring station.
9. A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claims 1-8 in which both the audio and video components of an audio-visual broadcast are saved to create a new audio-visual file. method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claims 1-8 in which only the audio portion of the broadcast is saved. 11 .A method of harvesting individual media files from recorded broadcasts according to claims 1-10 in which further comprising the step of transcoding said new recording into a different format.
12. Media file harvesting means comprising: broadcast receiving means; means for receiving identifying information indexing at least one section of said recording; and file creation means adapted to creating a new recording containing only said identified section.
13.A media file harvesting system substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the attached drawings.