AU2012200740A1 - Method for representing animated menu buttons - Google Patents

Abstract

Optical storage media often contain data structures for a menu suitable for selection of a title, a chapter, a parameter or others. Such menus usually comprise a number of buttons to be displayed, with each button having a state. Possible states of buttons are "unselected", "selected" or "activated". According to the invention, the representation of a menu button may vary, depending on its state. An image or an image sequence, e.g. cartoon, may be associated to a buttons state, providing user animation. Further, a sound or sound sequence, e.g. melody or click, may be associated to a buttons state, and may be played back when the button enters this state. A data structure is disclosed which allows storage of such menu data e.g. on a Blu-ray disc. Item 1 Item 4 Item 2 D Item 5 4 Item 3 F ig D Fig. 1

Description

I AUSTRALIA Patents Act 1990 THOMSON LICENSING S.A. COMPLETE SPECIFICATION STANDARD PATENT Invention Title: Method for representing animated menu buttons The following statement is a full description of this invention including the best method of performing it known to us:- 2 Title Method for representing animated menu buttons 5 Field of the invention This invention relates to a method for adding animated menu buttons to an optical storage medium. 10 Background Today's optical storage media formats are capable of supporting visual menus, e.g. for content management or control functions. Applications of such visual menus are the selection of one out of multiple titles on the disc, the selection of a chapter within a 15 title, and others. From the user perspective, such menus consist of a number of buttons shown on the display. The user may navigate within the menu, e.g. by pushing the up, down, left and right buttons on his remote control to select a menu button, and may activate a menu button through some kind of "OK" button on the remote control. An indicator, usually a highlight or an arrow, may provide feedback to the user, showing 20 which button is currently selected or activated. A menu button may have one of the states "normal", "selected" or "activated". However, known DVD menus are rather limited concerning extra features, since they contain only static visual buttons. 25 Further, a subtitling specification contained in the document "ETS 300 743: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Subtitling System" (DVB-ST), provided by the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI), is known for embedding subtitles into video sequences. 30 Summary of the Invention The present invention may be utilized to give more feedback to the user who operates a menu related to an optical storage medium. The feedback comprises visually and/or 35 aurally animated buttons. A method to provide such feedback is disclosed in claim 1.

3 A storage medium that contains an animated menu is disclosed in claim 9. An apparatus suitable for presenting such menu is disclosed in claim 10. 5 According to the invention, a menu button shown on a display may look different, depending on its state. The state may be "normal", "selected" or "activated", and for each of these states the button may have different color or shape. Additionally, a sound or sound sequence may be attached to some or all menu buttons, depending on the buttons state. Examples for sounds are a click or a melody, or a speech sequence. The 10 current invention provides a data structure by which those additional features can be described. Advantageous embodiments of the invention are disclosed in the dependent claims, the following description and the figure. 15 Brief description of the drawing An exemplary embodiment of the invention is described with reference to the accompanying drawing in Fig.1, which shows an on-screen menu according to the 20 invention, and a corresponding remote control. Detailed description of the invention Fig. 1 shows a video screen 1 containing a menu that comprises buttons 2,3 and related 25 text describing the buttons. When a user presses a button 5,6 on a remote control 4, the state of a button 2,3 may change, and also the representation of the button. In Fig.I one button 2 is selected, and thus looks different from the unselected buttons 3. When the user e.g. presses the "right" button 6 on the remote control, another button 3 is selected being right from the currently selected button 2. When the user presses the "OK" button 30 5, the selected button is activated, and the function associated with the selected button is performed. The selected button 2 according to the invention is animated, e.g. has another color and another shape than an unselected button 3, and its color or shape may change. Particularly, the button may also be replaced by a moving symbol, a moving cartoon or the like, depending on the state. 35 4 A preferred embodiment of the invention is based on the syntax and semantics of the subtitling specification contained in the document "ETS 300 743: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Subtitling System" (DVB-ST), provided by the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI). To provide enhanced capabilities 5 for menus relating to optical storage media, the page composition segment defined in DVB-ST is extended to describe animated menu buttons and to associate a sound or sound sequence to a button. The enhanced page composition segment is herein called a "menu page composition segment'. 10 This invention, like DVBST, uses page composition segments to describe the position of one or more rectangular regions on the display, assuming that a region contains a representation of one button in a certain state, e.g. as pixel data or bitmap. Each button image is thus addressable through an identifier (ID), or "region_id". In this embodiment of the invention, backward compatibility is kept with DVB-ST by using an 15 associated segment type ID for the menu page composition segment. The menu page composition segment is defined as listed in Tab.1. The "menu page composition segment" according to the invention may also replace the original page composition segment, e.g. in DVB-ST. A menu page composition 20 segment describes a menu and provides the necessary layout and timing information as well as additional control information. In one embodiment of the invention, being a simple case with static menus, each button is represented by e.g. three images. A first image represents the button in the "normal" 25 state, a second image represents the button in the "selected" state and a third image represents the button in the "activated" state. These images may be stored e.g. as bitmap files on the storage medium, and may be used to display the menu. In another embodiment, going beyond static menus, the menu page composition 30 segment also allows to describe animated buttons. In this case, the "normal" state and the "selected" state of a button are each represented through a series of images that are displayed, and may be e.g. cyclically repeated, on the screen to achieve the animation effect. Also for the "activated" state of a button an animation can be defined, but here it may be advantageous to display the animation phases only once, because the menu will 35 usually disappear or be modified after a button was activated.

5 For all button animations of a menu the menu author can specify an animation frame rate, defining how long each phase of an animation is displayed. Advantageously, the invention also provides the possibility to give aural feedback to 5 the user. If a button is either in the "selected" state or in the "activated" state, it may be assigned a sound identifier associated with a sound, which may be stored on the storage medium. The associated sound is played back when the button enters the respective button state. In one embodiment of the invention the associated sound is played back repeatedly, as long as the button is in the respective state. 10 The structure of the menu page composition segment and the semantics of the fields of the menu page composition segment are based on the structure and semantics given in DVB-ST, Section 7.2.1 "Page composition segment". Additional semantics definitions are used for an enhanced menu according to the invention. 15 Tab.1 shows the structure of a menu page composition segment according to the invention. Lines 1-8 are identical to the subtitle segment of the DVB-ST standard, giving the possibility to keep backward compatibility. The meaning of the fields shown in Tab.1 is described in the following. The addressing of pixels is based on a coordinate 20 system whose origin is defined by the top-left corner of the associated video screen. Pixel addresses increase from left to right and from top to bottom. The dimensions of the associated video are defined as video-width * videoheight. Field Size Type 1 menu_page compositionsegment ( { 2 sync byte 8 bslbf 3 segment type 8 bslbf 4 page id 16 bslbf 5 segment length 16 uimsbf 6 page time out 8 uimsbf 7 page version number 4 uimsbf 8 page state 2 bslbf 9 animation frame rate code 4 uimsbf 10 reserved 6 bslbf 11 while (processed length < segment length) { 8 uimsbf 12 button number 16 uimsbf 13 button horizontal address 16 uimsbf 14 button vertical address 15 neighbour info( 8 uimsbf 6 16 upper button number 8 uimsbf 17 lower button number 8 uimsbf 18 left button number 8 uimsbf 19 right button number 20 normal state infoo 8 uimsbf 21 start regionidnormal 8 uimsbf 22 end regionidnormal 8 uimsbf 23 selected-state info( 16 uimsbf 24 start region id selected 8 uimsbf 25 end region id selected 8 uimsbf 26 action state infoo 27 start region id activated 8 uimsbf 28 end region id activated 8 uimsbf 29 button command info( 30 sound infoo 31 selected sound id 8 uimsbf 32 activated sound id 8 uimsbf 4 } Tab.1: Syntax of a menu page composition segment A segment is generally a data unit within the storage area. The segment_type defines its 5 type. The menu page composition segment may be identified by setting e.g. segment type = Ox 18, since this value is not used in DVB-ST yet. The other fields in lines 2-8 of Tab.I define the segment data set. The animationframeratecode field specifies the frame rate of animations in the case 10 of animated buttons being used. It applies to a range of regions specified by start region_idxxx and end regionid_ xxx, with the "xxx" referring the state of a button. If a startregionid xxx and its corresponding endregion id__xxx differ, they define a range of regions that shall be presented with this animation frame rate. For the normal and selected state, the presentation may be cyclically repeated; for the 15 "activated" state, the presentation shall be performed only once. When any start region_id_xxx is identical to the associated end region_idxxx, this designates a static or non-animated button state. Only the region designated by startregionid xxx is displayed, and for that button state the animationframeratecode shall have no meaning. 20 7 Tab.2 shows an exemplary list of animationframeratecodes. An animation may be visible at full video frame rate, e.g. 30 pictures per second, meaning that with each video frame another phase of the animation is displayed. It may also be sufficient to display only with every other video frame another phase of the animated button, thus 5 achieving another effect. Further, it is possible to define the frame rate to either be relative or absolute. Therefore the values of the animation frame rate code field have two different meanings, depending on if an associated video is present. In this case the animationframerate_code gives the animation frame rate relative to the video frame rate, otherwise it gives the absolute frame rate. 10 animationframe_ Relative animation Abs. animation rate code frame rate Frame rate Ox0 Reserved Reserved OxI Full video frame rate 30 Hz 0x2 %/ of video frame rate 15 Hz 0x3 '% of video frame rate 8 Hz 0x4 1/8 of video frame rate 4 Hz 0x5 1/16 of video frame rate 2 Hz 0x6 1/32 of video frame rate 1 Hz 0x7 - OxF reserved Reserved Tab.2: Example of animationframeratecode The buttonnumber field specifies a number that is an internal identifier for a button, 15 and is used for the fields defined below, e.g. the neighbour infoo field. Additionally, when buttonnumber is entered directly through the user interface (UI), the associated button may be activated. Therefore a buttonnumber is unique within the menu. It may be e.g. a two-digit number in the range between 0 and 99. 20 Some fields used for menu animation according to the invention must be specified separately for each button. They are listed from line 11 of Tab.1, where a loop over all buttons starts. Each instance of the loop refers to one button. Implicitly, the button described by the first instance of the while-loop within menu_page compositionsegment() may be considered as "selected" when entering the 25 menu, and may be considered as "activated" if a page timeout for the menu is set and becomes active.

8 The buttonhorizontaladdress field specifies the horizontal address of the top left pixel of the button. The specified horizontal position may be in between 0 and videowidth 1. Likewise, the buttonverticaladdress field specifies the vertical address of the top left 5 pixel of the button. The specified vertical position may be in between 0 and video_height-i. The upperbuttonnumber field specifies the button to be selected when the user navigates upward from the current button. The lowerbutton-number field specifies the 10 button to be selected when the user navigates downward from the current button. The leftbuttonnumber field specifies the button to be selected when the user navigates left from the current button. And the rightbuttonnumber field specifies the button to be selected when the user navigates right from the current button. 15 The start regionid_normal field specifies the ID of the first region to be presented for a button presentation in normal state, and the endregion idnormal field specifies the ID of the last region to be presented for a button presentation in normal state. All regions with an ID between and including start region_id_normal and end region_id_normal shall exist; if startregion id_normal differs from 20 end region id normal, that range of regions shall be presented cyclically with the animation frame rate as defined by animationframeratecode. The start regionid_selected field specifies the ID of the first region to be presented for a button presentation in the selected state, and the endregion idselected field 25 specifies the ID of the last region to be presented for a button presentation in the selected state. All regions with IDs between start regionid_selected and end region_idselected shall exist; if start regionid_selected differs from end regionid_selected, that range of regions shall be presented cyclically with the animation frame rate described by animationframeratecode. 30 The startregion idactivated field specifies the ID of the first region to be presented for a button presentation in activated state, and the endregion idactivated field specifies the ID of the last region to be presented for a button presentation in activated state. All regions with IDs between startregionid_activated and 35 end region idactivated shall exist; if startregion idactivated differs from 9 end region_id_activated, that range of regions shall be presented once with the animation frame rate described by animationframeratecode. The buttoncommandinfoo field serves as a container for commands associated with 5 this button, specifying the commands to be performed when the button is activated. Finally, the selectedsoundid field specifies the ID of the sound to be played when the button enters the "selected" state, and the activatedsoundid field specifies the ID of the sound to be played when the button enters the "activated" state. 10 The invention may be used particularly for menus stored on Blu-ray discs, but also DVD or other optical or non-optical high-capacity storage media.

Claims (10)

1. A method for representing menu buttons (2,3), the menu buttons (2,3) having an associated state, the state being unselected (3), selected (2) or activated, 5 characterized in that - data representing the menu buttons are stored in bitmap format on a removable storage medium; and - a menu button is represented by different symbols, depending on its state, wherein the different symbols are stored as different bitmap 10 formatted data.

2. Method according to claim 1, wherein the data representing a menu button on the display are image data, being a still picture or a sequence of pictures. 15

3. Method according to claim 2, wherein for a certain state the sequence of pictures representing a button is repeated as long as the button remains in its state.

4. Method according to claim 2 or 3, wherein the rate at which a sequence of 20 pictures is displayed is either an absolute rate or relative to the video frame rate, and a value defining said rate is stored on said storage medium.

5. Method according to any of the previous claims, wherein a sound or sound sequence may be associated to a state of a menu button, the sound or sound 25 sequence being played back upon entry of the button into the associated state.

6. Method according to claim 5, wherein the sound associated with a state of a menu button is a speech sequence. 30

7. Method according to any of the previous claims, wherein a region identifier, the region identifier being stored on said storage medium, determines the display position of a menu button.

8. Method according to any of the previous claims, wherein the data structure on 35 said storage medium contains a segment defining the page composition, the data segment containing said data representing the menu buttons. 11

9. A storage medium containing a data segment representing menu data, the menu data comprising menu buttons, wherein the menu buttons may be represented according to any of the methods of claims 1-8. 5

10. An apparatus for displaying a menu on a screen, the menu being controlled by menu data read from a storage medium and the menu comprising menu buttons, wherein the menu buttons may be represented according to any of the methods of claims 1-8. 10