JPH05181905A - Retrieval information display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the efficiency of information retrieval without retrieving and displaying individual pieces of information by making a display for retrieval representatively with one of plural sections as to information in one group which is related as specified. CONSTITUTION:As for information in one group which is related as specified like a successive shot record so as to improve the retrieval efficiency of stored information, pieces of information in sections 2-8 on a multi-screen display shown by (A) are retrieved and displayed representatively with one frame among divided frames like one display screen 21a shown by (B). In this case, there are various ways (grouping) of relating one group of information as specified such as a way regarding successive shooting and a way regarding successive interval photography and operation for grouping itself can be done automatically or by proper operation at either point of the recording or reproduction of information to be retrieved.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a search information display device, and more particularly to a search information display device with improved image data search efficiency.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, as the types of recording media have been diversified from magnetic disks to IC memory cards and further to magneto-optical disks, the amount of information that can be recorded on one recording medium has increased dramatically. There is. Therefore, a search function for searching for desired image data from a large number of image data recorded on one recording medium becomes more and more important.

As this kind of search means, as shown in FIG. 1 (A), one display screen 21 is divided into a plurality of partitions, for example, 4 ×.
Conventionally, there has been used a means for displaying the contents of information to be searched in a multi-screen manner by dividing each section into 4 = 16. In addition to this, as shown in FIG. 5A, for example, interval reproduction in which image data is switched and displayed on a monitor on a single display screen at fixed time intervals, or continuous reproduction is also used.

Recording of information on one recording medium will be described in the case of, for example, a camera. In addition to still image recording in a single-shot mode by a still camera or moving image recording by a movie, for example, in the case of golf. There are various types such as so-called continuous shooting recording in which the movement of the club during a swing is recorded as a continuous still image at 10 or 20 frames per second.

[0005]

Problems to be Solved by the Invention Now, referring to FIG.
According to the multi-screen display shown in Fig. 1, it is possible to sequentially search the stored information recorded on one recording medium to find the target image data, but the number of divisions in the multi-screen display is limited. Since there is, all recorded data is 1
If they are displayed one by one, they cannot be displayed on one screen and the multi-screen display must be repeated many times. This also applies to interval playback and continuous playback, and even if an attempt is made to shorten the interval time, there is a limit to the visibility of the human eye, so it takes a considerable amount of time to complete the search. .. In this case, in the image data recorded on one recording medium, for example, the screen numbers 2 to 8 in FIG. 1A or the interval reproduction screens 32 to 35 in FIG. In many cases, it is possible to search as a group of information having a predetermined association such as continuous shooting recording, and it is not necessary to search and display the individual information.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a search information display device which can solve the above problems and improve the search efficiency at the time of information search.

[0007]

The search information display device of the present invention is configured to divide one display screen into a plurality of sections and display the content of information to be searched by each section. The search information display device is characterized in that a group of pieces of information associated with each other in a predetermined manner is representatively displayed for search by one of the sections.

[0008]

EXAMPLES Examples of the present invention will be described below. Prior to describing the embodiments of the present invention, an IC memory card is assumed as the recording medium searched by the search information display device of the present invention, and the recording format of the IC memory card will be described with reference to Table 1. ..

[0009]

[Table 1] Table 1 above shows JEIDA “IC memory card guideline Ver4.1” and “DOS interface
Each of them is created in conformity with the “Guideline Ver1.1” and is composed of an attribute memory 24 and a common memory 25. The image of the memory arrangement of the common memory 25 is divided into an attribute information area and a data area. The attribute information area contains a data start address, block length, initialization date and time, and the data area contains various data. Written. The data area includes a memory management area and an image data file area. The above is the outline of the recording format in the IC memory card. Next, examples will be described.

In order to improve the retrieval efficiency of stored information, the retrieval information display apparatus of the present invention has a structure shown in FIG. 1 (A) for a group of information that is associated in a predetermined manner, such as the continuous shooting record. The information of the sections 2 to 8 in the multi-screen display shown in FIG. 1B is representatively displayed for retrieval in one of the divided frames as in one display screen 21a shown in FIG. In this case, there are various methods of associating as a group of information (hereinafter, referred to as grouping), such as one relating to one continuous shooting, one relating to one interval shooting, and the grouping. The operation itself can be performed automatically or by an appropriate operation at any time of recording or reproducing the search target information.
Examples corresponding to these will be described below. However, since the hardware configuration is the same in each embodiment, the hardware side will be described first with reference to the block configuration diagram of FIG. 2 in the example of the IC memory card camera to which the present invention is applied.

In FIG. 2, when the camera is set to the recording mode, the subject image transmitted through the optical system 1 is photoelectrically converted into an electric signal in the image pickup system 2 including a CCD or the like.
This electric signal is converted into a digital signal by the A / D (analog / digital) conversion circuit 4 after the DC level is kept constant by the clamp circuit 3. This digital signal is once written to the frame memory 6 via the memory control circuit 5.

Image data converted into a digital signal,
When all the data has been written in the frame memory 6, the memory control circuit 5 reads the data from the frame memory 6 while the DCT (discrete cosine transform) / ID
In the CT circuit 7, data necessary for data compression is converted and sent to the coder / decoder 8. The coder / decoder 8 compresses this data through the card I / F circuit 9 and writes it to the IC memory card 11 while using the auxiliary memory 10.

On the other hand, when the camera is set to the reproduction mode, the data read from the IC memory card 11 is
Decompression processing is performed in the coder / decoder 8 via the card I / F circuit 9. The data decompressed by the coder / decoder 8 is subjected to inverse DCT processing in the DCT / IDCT circuit 7 and written in the frame memory 6 through the memory control circuit 5.

When the expansion processing of all data is completed, this time the data is read from the frame memory 6 by the memory control circuit 5 and converted into an analog signal by the D / A (digital / analog) conversion circuit 12,
An image is reproduced by an EVF (electronic viewfinder) 14 after passing through the 75Ω driver 13. The output of the driver 13 is also supplied to the external output terminal 15.

In addition to this, the character generator 16
On-screen display such as date and time is displayed on the screen. In addition, a display unit 17 for displaying various operation modes and the like, an operation unit 18 for performing various operations, a system controller 19 for controlling these respective components, and the like are provided. The above is the hardware configuration.

Conventionally, as shown in FIG. 3 (A), the data area recorded as information on the IC memory card has a header for date data etc. separately from the area 22 for recording the original image data. Is known to be recorded as. For example, when the data recorded in one shooting is 32 kB, 512 B of the 32 kB is assigned to the various data as the header area 21. A plurality of such data recording areas are formed in one IC memory card.

Now, in addition to the conventional data (date data, etc.), the group information 23 is newly recorded in the header area 21 as shown in FIG. 3B, which is the first embodiment of the present invention. As described here. As this group information, it can be considered whether it is group data or individual data, and if it is group data, the number of data in the group. Therefore, this will be described with reference to FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of the recording operation of the group data 23, focusing on the interface with the IC memory card. When shooting is completed and recording of image data is completed (step S1), this data is recorded so as to be recognized as group data at the time of retrieval, or
It is determined whether to record as independent data (step S
2).

When recording as group data, if the group data is, for example, the Xth data in the Yth group, it is recorded as "GY-X" (step S4). On the other hand, when it is to be searched and displayed as individual data, it is recorded in the group data display area 23 as "S-X" for the Xth individual data (step S3). After that, other items such as the date to be recorded in the header area 21 are recorded (step S5), and the recording of one sheet of data is completed.

According to the first embodiment described above, the area for recording the image data to be recorded in the header area of the IC memory card is single data or a group of information which is associated with a predetermined condition such as continuous shooting. Since the information related to the same grouping is recorded as "GY-X", for example, when the stored information is searched and displayed by the multi-screen display, the above-mentioned predetermined association 1 is made. It is possible to automatically display one representative sheet (or only several representative sheets) without displaying the entire group information. Due to this, in the limited search display screen,
You can search and display more stored image data,
Search efficiency can be improved.

The above is the case of searching and displaying the image data on the multi-screen, but the same thing can be applied to the case of the interval reproduction shown in FIG. 5 (A). That is, the shooting records 32 to 35 in the continuous shooting mode are shown in FIG.
As shown in (B), the search efficiency can be improved by performing a search display on behalf of the shooting record 32 and then reproducing the single record 36. Therefore, the search display in the interval reproduction mode as shown in FIG. 5B will be described here as a modified example of the first embodiment.

Although the above is the case where the image data is recorded in the continuous shooting mode, grouping by shooting date is also possible. That is, when the shooting dates are the same, the image data of the same date are set to the same group, and only the image data representing the group is displayed on the monitor at the time of search, so that the search efficiency by date can be improved. It can be used when used like an electronic album, and is described here as a second embodiment of the present invention.

In addition to this, grouping by manual operation is also possible. For example, paying attention to the point of being a specific person, and searching and displaying arbitrary image data by one of certain specific person images as a representative, the search efficiency is improved. Can be improved and is described here as a third embodiment of the invention.

In the third embodiment, the image data once recorded normally is grouped later by manual operation. However, if the operation unit 18 is operated during recording, all the image data photographed after this operation will be recorded. It is also possible to perform grouping in the same manner, and to cancel this grouping operation by operating the operating portion 18 again. This will be described here as a modified example of the third embodiment.

Further, unlike the above embodiments, the header area 2
1 does not have the group data display area 23 (see FIG. 3), and therefore the header information records the same data as the conventional one,
At the time of reproduction, the system controller 19 (see FIG. 2) can interpret these image data (header information) and perform software grouping, which will be described here as a fourth embodiment of the present invention.

According to the fourth embodiment, the group data display area 23 is not necessary and the degree of freedom of grouping can be improved. Then, even if the grouping is not taken into consideration at the time of recording, desired grouping can be performed at the time of reproduction, and the search efficiency can be improved.

In each of the above embodiments, the header area 21 (see FIG.
However, the grouping is described in more detail in Table 2 as the group information 27. On the other hand, as shown in Table 1, grouping may be performed by the file name 26 in the "root directory" in the memory management area.

[Table 2] In addition, when grouping in the root directory,
It is also possible to use a file name (extension name) or a subdirectory as shown in Table 3 below.

[0028]

[Table 3] Although each of the above embodiments has been described as an example in which the present invention is applied to an IC memory card camera, it becomes more effective if it is applied to a large-capacity recording medium such as a magneto-optical disk instead of the IC memory card. Further, it is needless to say that the present invention is not limited to a camera and can be widely applied to information retrieval of an apparatus that records and reproduces information.

[0029]

As described above, according to the present invention, when one display screen is divided into a plurality of sections and the content of information to be searched is displayed by each section, a predetermined association is made. As for the information of one group, the information for retrieval is representatively displayed by the one in the above section, so that the remarkable effect that the retrieval efficiency at the time of information retrieval can be improved is exhibited.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1A is a diagram illustrating a conventional multi-screen display, and FIG. 1B is a diagram illustrating a multi-screen display according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block configuration diagram of an IC memory card camera to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 3A is a diagram illustrating a recording area of an IC memory card according to the related art and FIG. 3B is a diagram illustrating a recording area of the IC memory card according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a recording operation in a group data display area.

5A is a diagram for explaining interval reproduction in the related art and FIG. 5B is a diagram for explaining interval reproduction in the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 21a ... one display screen

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A search information display device in which one display screen is divided into a plurality of sections, and the content of information to be searched is displayed by each section, a group of predetermined associations is provided. A search information display device characterized in that a display for search is typically performed by one of the above sections for information.