JP2005094709A - Motion picture retrieval system and method, and computer program - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To assist retrieval works for a motion picture content through browsing via a user interface. <P>SOLUTION: A title for each block constituting a motion picture under present operation is displayed in a list at time order. In addition, if a motion picture content is replayed, a header time is updated sequentially and a relevant time position is indicated on a time line, as the replay time proceeds. In response to title selection about a certain block by a user during displaying a title list, the header time is moved into the selected block, and a screen is switched to a representative picture of the selected block. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a search system and search method for supporting search of desired content from a large amount of content, and a computer program, and in particular, a video search system and video search method for supporting search of moving image content, And a computer program.

  More specifically, the present invention relates to a moving image search system and a moving image search method for efficiently searching for a scene that a user desires to view from moving image content, and a computer program. Video search system, video search method, and computer program for presenting important information related to content selection, such as whether the scene you want to see, whether there are many scene changes, and so on in a user-friendly format About.

  In recent years, computing technologies such as information processing and information communication have improved dramatically, and computer systems have become widespread. Furthermore, there is an increasing demand for network computing technology for interconnecting computers. Under a network connection environment, it is possible to smoothly perform collaborative work such as sharing of computer resources and sharing, distribution, distribution, and exchange of information.

  In recent years, with the widespread use of the Internet and broadband communication networks (xDSL: x Digital Subscriber Line, CATV (Cable TV), wireless networks, etc.), various digital contents including computer files are actively distributed over the network. It is. In addition, a mechanism is being set up in which digital data such as music data, image data, electronic publications, and even rich content such as moving images can be transmitted without stress to the user.

  Recently, in conjunction with improvements in information processing technology and information communication technology, content for business use, entertainment, and learning / education / training has been packaged or digitized. For example, it is delivered as a teaching material to a learner via media such as video and DVD. Alternatively, teachers, instructors, and students can be connected by a network to provide an interactive learning environment between remote locations. There is also a Web-based learning system (WBT: Web Based Training) that stores teaching material contents in a form that can be handled in an information search space such as HTML.

  The amount and quality of contents are becoming more and more rich, but conversely, it is difficult to successfully extract desired or necessary contents from a vast amount of contents. For this reason, even originally useful content is buried without being reusable, and the problem of “disposable” or “deadly stored” has occurred.

  Text documents generally have many cues, such as headings, paragraphs, and punctuation marks that help the reader quickly determine the beginning and end of different sections of the document and find their scope of interest. Contains. In contrast, moving images and audio basically do not contain information about simple features such as the start and end points of a section. For this reason, conventional video search systems only provide standard "VCR (video cassette tape) type" playback control options such as playback, stop, rewind, and fast forward. It is difficult to search for interesting parts in a video using standard playback controls so that anyone with experience trying to locate a specific video clip on a conventional video tape using a standard VCR can understand. There are many things.

  There has also been a technology development in which information representing the feature contents of a media file, such as a moving image, is extracted and presented to the user to support search. For example, proposals have been made for media browsers that allow users to more easily review media files using media content features (see, for example, US Pat. In this case, a command is entered to browse the media file, the desired media file is received / searched, a graphical user interface is displayed to the user, and the user has at least one feature in the media file. The reliability corresponding to the selected feature is searched / generated, and feature information is provided based on the reliability, and media playback is performed as desired. Media playback starts from the corresponding position in the media file.

  However, many of the conventional moving image search systems merely present table of contents information including text information such as a table of contents number, title, and time. For this reason, the user must guess the scene in the moving image from the text information, and the search operation is difficult.

  Further, even during playback of a search candidate video, only the scene at the playback time point can be viewed. In other words, there is no other way to view the content, and important information related to the selection of content, such as whether the scene you want to see is included near the playback position, whether there are many scene changes, or not, is still not presented. .

  For example, there has been proposed a digital image management search system that facilitates access to a specific scene of a digital moving image and makes it easy to search, edit, and manage images (see, for example, Patent Document 2). about). In this case, each moving image file includes an image index corresponding to the content of the time axis data indicating the start position of the first image of each scene in the moving image file and an index list for storing a plurality of indexes in the moving image file. The index name of the index stored in the index list is displayed and user designation is accepted, the image at the start position of the designated scene is displayed, and the image data can be reproduced. The generation of the image index list and the addition, reading, change, and deletion of the image index are automatically performed according to the image capture. However, since an index image is generated from a specified time and a moving image is accessed from the index information, it is impossible to efficiently find a scene that the user wants to view.

JP 2000-90121 A Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-13773

  An object of the present invention is to provide an excellent moving image search system, moving image search method, and computer program that can favorably support the search for moving image content.

  A further object of the present invention is to provide an excellent video search system, video search method, and computer program capable of efficiently searching for a scene that a user desires to view from moving image content. It is in.

  It is a further object of the present invention to present important information related to selection of contents, such as whether a scene to be viewed near the playback position is included, whether there are many scene changes, or the like in a user-friendly format. It is an object of the present invention to provide an excellent moving image search system, moving image search method, and computer program.

The present invention has been made in consideration of the above-mentioned problems, and a first aspect thereof is a video search system that supports a search for video content,
Index information presentation means for presenting text-based index information about video content;
Scene presentation means for presenting a scene near the playback position from the playback position of the video content;
It is a moving image search system characterized by comprising.

  The moving image search system according to the present invention further includes content management means for index managing each moving image content to be searched. This content management means, for example, divides moving image content into a plurality of blocks in the length (time) direction of the data stream, and for each divided block, the title of the block or other text information, on the data stream The block position information, the block data length, and the representative image extracted from the block are managed as index information.

  In addition, the moving image search system according to the present invention further includes content reproduction screen presenting means for providing a moving image or still video frame display of an image included in the moving image content to be operated.

  Here, the index information presenting means displays a list of titles or other text information about each block constituting the currently operated moving image in time order.

  In addition, the moving image search system according to the present invention presents time elements of moving image content to be operated in a time axis direction and presents the time position of the current operation in the content as the heading time. Reproduction position information presenting means is further provided. That is, when the moving image content is reproduced, the reproduction position information presenting means sequentially updates the heading time and indicates the corresponding time position on the timeline as the reproduction time advances.

  The reproduction position information presenting means may indicate the position of the block boundary of the moving image content as the operation target on the timeline. Further, on the timeline, the position of the representative image of each block constituting the moving image content to be operated, the position of the scene change, etc. may be indicated.

  Moreover, the moving image search system according to the present invention may further include representative image presenting means for presenting a representative image for the moving image content that is the operation target.

  The reproduction position information presenting means moves the heading time to the selected block in response to selection of a title or other text information by a user during a list display by the index information presenting means. At the same time, the representative image of the selected block is switched.

  In this way, by providing the relative position information in the entire video and representative scene images in the vicinity to the user, the user is provided with scene information where the table of contents is placed before actually watching the video. It is possible to efficiently find a scene that the user wants to view.

  Further, the representative image presenting means may sequentially switch to the representative image of the block including the current heading time with the progress of the reproduction of the moving image content as the operation target.

  As the moving image content playback time advances, the position display of the heading time is sequentially updated on the timeline, and the representative image is also switched accordingly. In other words, by displaying the relative position information of the playback time on the timeline, the user can grasp in advance a scene image that represents some or the vicinity of the scene change near the playback position and add a sharpness to the user. A scene near the playback position can be viewed.

A second aspect of the present invention is a computer program described in a computer-readable format so as to execute processing for supporting retrieval of moving image content on a computer system.
An index information presentation step for presenting text-based index information about the video content;
A scene presentation step for presenting a scene near the playback position from the playback position of the video content;
A computer program characterized by comprising:

  The computer program according to the second aspect of the present invention defines a computer program described in a computer-readable format so as to realize predetermined processing on a computer system. In other words, by installing the computer program according to the second aspect of the present invention in the computer system, a cooperative action is exhibited on the computer system, and the moving image search according to the first aspect of the present invention. The same effect as the system can be obtained.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to provide an excellent video search system, video search method, and computer program capable of efficiently searching a scene that a user desires to view from moving image content. it can.

  In addition, according to the present invention, important information related to selection of contents, such as whether a scene to be viewed near the playback position is included, whether there are many scene changes, or the like is presented in a user-friendly format. It is possible to provide an excellent moving image search system, moving image search method, and computer program.

  Other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from more detailed description based on embodiments of the present invention described later and the accompanying drawings.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

  The present invention supports a search operation for content, particularly moving image content, through browsing through a user interface. Content browsing as used herein includes all operations related to review (review), operation, editing, partial selection, storage, transfer, search, or other operations related to content.

  As an embodiment of the present invention, contents targeted for a distribution service such as a moving image are registered on a distribution server, for example, and the distribution server is a wide area network such as the Internet, other specific area service, or other Assume a case where a content distribution / provision service is performed via a medium. Then, the client installs a specific (or general) browser for viewing moving images and other distribution contents, accesses the distribution server via this browser screen, searches for desired contents, and others The browser operation can be performed. The distribution server provides content search support in response to a request from the client and provides the requested content for a fee or free of charge.

  FIG. 1 schematically shows a configuration of a content distribution system according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the example shown in the figure, a distribution server and an unspecified number of clients are interconnected via the Internet. Here, the client is broadly classified into a registration client that registers content such as moving images to be distributed and a browsing client that requests registered distribution content.

  In the present embodiment, on the distribution server, in the content distribution service (or when registering moving image content), one moving image content is divided into a plurality of blocks in the length (time) direction of the data stream. Create and manage an index (table of contents). Here, the boundaries of the stream blocks are determined based on, for example, scene change extraction, but the block division method itself is not particularly limited. The index includes a title given to each block, position information such as a relative position (heading time) from the beginning of the stream to the block, a data length of the block, and the like. Further, representative images in the block are extracted and indexed together. For example, a control table as shown in FIG. 6 is prepared for each moving image content. However, the representative image extraction method itself is not particularly limited.

  FIG. 2 shows a screen configuration example of the graphical user interface 10 for assisting the user in searching for moving image content in the content distribution service according to the present invention.

  The illustrated graphical user interface 10 is typically displayed on a video display, such as a computer monitor, but may be presented to the user on other display devices.

  The graphical user interface 10 is configured as a general window screen having a title bar at the top including control buttons and a menu bar including a plurality of menu items immediately below the title bar. In this window, a video display unit 1, a table of contents list display unit 2, a timeline 3, and a representative image display unit 4 are arranged.

  The video display unit 1 can provide a moving image or still video frame display of an image included in the moving image content that is the operation target. The video display unit 1 is adjacent to a control button unit 1A for performing general video viewing operations such as playback, pause, and stop.

  The table of contents list display unit 2 takes out the information of the table of contents of each block constituting the moving image content to be operated, and arranges it as a table of contents icon in order from the top in the time direction. The table of contents icon is strip-shaped and shows the title and other text-based information given to the block.

  The timeline 3 is a band-like display area in which temporal elements of the moving image content to be operated are expanded (mapped) in the line (horizontal axis) direction, and a thumb 3A indicating the current time position in the content, that is, the heading time. Is included. The timeline 3 shown in FIG. 2 spans a range from 0:00 to 17:40 and is arbitrarily scaled and panned by a timeline control (not shown). The thumb 3A can be moved along the timeline 3 in a timely manner. Alternatively, the user can select the thumb 3A using the mouse and move the thumb 3A to a desired position along the timeline 3 using the mouse.

  By operating the thumb 3A on the time axis, the corresponding video display of the content located at the time position of the thumb 3A can be reproduced. For example, as the thumb 3A moves, a video frame or a representative image selected in advance is displayed on the representative image display unit 4 at a corresponding clock position in the content. Alternatively, after the thumb 3A is moved to a desired position and released, video playback can be started from the corresponding position in the content.

  What is characteristic in the timeline 3 in this embodiment is that a large slit indicating a block boundary is displayed at a corresponding time position, and a small slit is displayed at each time position where a scene change occurs. .

  The representative image display unit 4 displays a reduced representative image of the moving image content that is the operation target.

  Next, the operation procedure of the screen on the graphical user interface 10 will be described.

  FIG. 3 shows an example of an operation procedure on the graphical user interface 10 in the form of a flowchart.

  When the user selects one moving image content as a candidate by moving image search, the corresponding index information is read. As a result, as shown in FIG. 2, the title information of each block constituting the moving image content that is the operation target is displayed as a list in the time direction from the top in the table of contents list display unit 2 as a table of contents icon.

  Here, when the user moves the cursor to a certain table of contents icon (or clicks with the mouse) (step S1), in response to this, the heading time moves to the start position of the corresponding block, and on the timeline 3, The thumb 3A is instructed at a place corresponding to the heading time.

  In response to the selection operation of the table of contents icon, the representative image display unit switches the display content to the representative image for the corresponding block (step S3).

  In this way, by providing the relative position information in the entire video and representative scene images in the vicinity to the user, the user is provided with scene information where the table of contents is placed before actually watching the video. It is possible to efficiently find a scene that the user wants to view.

  FIG. 4 illustrates another example of the operation procedure on the graphical user interface 10. FIG. 5 shows the operation procedure in the form of a flowchart.

  On the video display unit 1, a playback image of a moving image of an image included in the moving image content that is the operation target is displayed (step S11).

  At this time, on the timeline 3, the thumb 3A indicating the heading time moves on the time axis as the content reproduction proceeds (step S12). On the timeline 3, a large slit indicating the block boundary is displayed at the corresponding time position, and a small slit is displayed at each time position where a scene change occurs, so that the scene can be viewed clearly. Can be made.

  Further, when the content reproduction proceeds and the process proceeds to the next block, the display on the representative image display unit 4 is switched to the representative image of the next block (step S13).

  As the moving image content playback time advances, the position display of the heading time is sequentially updated on the timeline, and the representative image is also switched accordingly. In other words, by displaying the relative position information of the playback time on the timeline, the user can grasp in advance a scene image that represents some or the vicinity of the scene change near the playback position and add a sharpness to the user. A scene near the playback position can be viewed.

[Supplement]
The present invention has been described in detail above with reference to specific embodiments. However, it is obvious that those skilled in the art can make modifications and substitutions of the embodiment without departing from the gist of the present invention. That is, the present invention has been disclosed in the form of exemplification, and the contents described in the present specification should not be interpreted in a limited manner. In order to determine the gist of the present invention, the claims section described at the beginning should be considered.

FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically showing a configuration of a content distribution system according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a screen configuration example of the graphical user interface 10 for assisting a user in searching for moving image content in the content distribution service according to the present invention. FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an example of an operation procedure on the graphical user interface 10. It is a figure for demonstrating the operation | movement procedure on the graphical user interface 10 for assisting the search of a user's moving image content. FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing another example of the operation procedure on the graphical user interface 10. FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a configuration example of a control table for managing index information of moving image content.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Video display part 2 ... Contents list display part 3 ... Timeline 4 ... Representative image display part 10 ... Graphical user interface screen

Claims (23)

A video search system that supports video content search,
Index information presentation means for presenting text-based index information about video content;
Scene presentation means for presenting a scene near the playback position from the playback position of the video content;
A video search system comprising: Each video content to be searched is divided into a plurality of blocks in the length (time) direction of the data stream, and for each divided block, the block title or other text information, and the position of the block on the data stream Content management means for managing information, the data length of the block, and the representative image extracted from the block as index information;
The moving image search system according to claim 1. A content playback screen presenting means for providing a video or still video frame display of an image included in the video content that is the operation target;
The moving image search system according to claim 1. The index information presenting means displays a list of titles or other text information for each block constituting the currently operated video in chronological order,
The moving image search system according to claim 3. In addition to expanding and presenting temporal elements of the moving image content as the operation target in the time axis direction, it further includes reproduction position information presenting means for indicating the time position during the current operation in the content as the heading time.
The moving image search system according to claim 4, wherein: The reproduction position information presenting means indicates the position of the block boundary of the moving image content that is the operation target.
The moving image search system according to claim 5, wherein: The reproduction position information presenting means indicates the position of the representative image for each block in the moving image content that is the operation target.
The moving image search system according to claim 5, wherein: A representative image presenting means for presenting a representative image of the moving image content to be operated;
The moving image search system according to claim 4, wherein: The reproduction position information presenting means moves the heading time to the selected block in response to selection of a title or other text information by a user during a list display by the index information presenting means. To
The moving image search system according to claim 5, wherein: The representative image presenting means switches to the representative image of the selected block in response to selection of a title or other text information by a user during a list display by the index information presenting means.
The moving image search system according to claim 8, wherein: The representative image presenting means switches to the representative image of the block including the current heading time as the reproduction of the moving image content that is the operation target proceeds.
The moving image search system according to claim 8, wherein: A video search method that supports searching video content,
An index information presentation step for presenting text-based index information about the video content;
A scene presentation step for presenting a scene near the playback position from the playback position of the video content;
A moving picture search method comprising: Each video content to be searched is divided into a plurality of blocks in the length (time) direction of the data stream, and for each divided block, the block title or other text information, and the position of the block on the data stream A content management step of managing information, a data length of the block, and a representative image extracted from the block as index information;
The moving image search method according to claim 12, wherein: A content playback screen presentation step for providing a video or still video frame display of an image included in the video content that is the operation target;
The moving image search method according to claim 12, wherein: In the index information presenting step, a list of titles or other text information about each block constituting the currently operated video is displayed in a time sequence.
The moving image search method according to claim 14, wherein: In addition to expanding and presenting temporal elements of the moving image content that is the operation target in the time axis direction, it further includes a reproduction position information presentation step that indicates the time position of the current operation in the content as the heading time.
The moving image search method according to claim 15. In the reproduction position information presenting step, the position of the block boundary of the video content that is the operation target is indicated.
The moving image search method according to claim 16. In the reproduction position information presentation step, the position of the representative image for each block in the moving image content that is the operation target is indicated.
The moving image search method according to claim 16. A representative image presenting step for presenting a representative image of the moving image content to be operated;
The moving image search method according to claim 15. In the reproduction position information presenting step, the heading time is moved to the selected block in response to selection of a title or other text information by a user during a list display in the index information presenting step. To
The moving image search method according to claim 16. In the representative image presentation step, in response to the selection of the title or other text information for a certain block by the user during the list display in the index information presentation step, the representative image is switched to the representative image of the selected block.
The moving image search method according to claim 19, wherein: In the representative image presenting step, switching to the representative image of the block including the current heading time as the reproduction of the moving image content that is the operation target proceeds.
The moving image search method according to claim 19, wherein: A computer program written in a computer-readable format so as to execute a process for supporting retrieval of moving image content on a computer system,
An index information presentation step for presenting text-based index information about the video content;
A scene presentation step for presenting a scene near the playback position from the playback position of the video content;
A computer program comprising:

Images