JPH08115333A - Video management display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To visually grasp the storage place of desired video information without knowing the classification structure of the video information by displaying the video information or a part of the video information according to the natural order that absolute time information has. CONSTITUTION: This device has a video storage part 16 which stores the video information consisting of video or a video summary, a clock 15 which generates time information, an instruction input part 18 which inputs signals necessary for a computation control part 12, and an absolute time information storage part 17 which holds the relation between the absolute video information regarding the video information, and the video information. Further, the device has a list display part 13 which displays the video information or a part of the video information in the natural order that the absolute time information has, and a display 14 which displays its contents. The The video storage part 16 stores the video information, and the absolute time information storage part 17 holds the relation between the absolute time information regarding the video and the video. Therefore, the list display part 13 can displays a list of the video information on a display screen in the natural order that the absolute time has.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a video management display device for storing, managing, accessing, and using video information such as video or video summary, and more particularly to a technique effective when applied to management display of television video. is there.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, as a user interface for managing and using a video database, some kind of classification is performed at the time of registration and a search is performed while interpreting to which classification the video desired by the user belongs. there were.
For such a video management display device, see TGAguierre
Smith, "Stratification: Toward a Computer Represent
ation of the Moving Image, "MIT Media Lab, 199.

[0003]

In the above-mentioned prior art described above, (1) it is not possible to perform an efficient search unless one is familiar with the video classification structure, and (2) where is the video classified when registered? It becomes a big problem and it will not be possible to search again if wrong classification is performed. (3) The impression that human beings from the video varies from person to person, and there is no common classification for everyone, (4) Video information ( There is a problem in that the work of registering and deleting (video data) in the database system requires skill and is a troublesome work.

An object of the present invention is to provide a video management display technique capable of visually grasping the storage location of video information desired by the user without knowing the classification structure of the video information.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a video management display technique capable of easily performing registration / deletion processing of video information.

The above and other objects and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the description of this specification and the accompanying drawings.

[0007]

The outline of the representative ones of the inventions disclosed in the present application will be briefly described as follows. That is, the video management display device of the present invention issues a calculation control unit, a video input unit that sends a video to the calculation control unit, a video information storage unit that stores the video information that is the video or video summary, and time information. A clock, an instruction input unit for inputting a necessary signal to the calculation control unit, an absolute time information storage unit for holding a relationship between the absolute time information related to the video information and the video information, and a natural property of the absolute time information. A list display unit for displaying the video information or a part of the video information in accordance with the above order, and a display for displaying the contents of the list display unit. The instruction input unit can freely set the time unit of the absolute time information. Further, the calculation control unit monitors the video information amount of the video information storage unit,
When the video information amount exceeds a predetermined storage amount, the video information storage unit has means for specifying the oldest video information among the video information stored in the video information storage unit and deleting the specified video information. .

[0008]

According to the above-mentioned means, in the video management display device of the present invention, the video information storage unit stores the video information, and the absolute time information storage unit shows the relationship between the absolute time information and the video. keeping. Therefore, it becomes possible for the list display unit to display a list of video information on the display screen in accordance with the natural order of absolute time (chronological order), and the classification of video information can be performed anywhere without knowing the structure of the desired video. You will be able to visually understand whether or not is included. That is, even if the user does not have a thorough knowledge of the classification structure of video information, efficient search can be performed.

Further, according to the present invention, the video information is sequentially registered (accumulated) by giving a file name according to the time by the clock for each preset time amount.
Since the visual interface is formed by the list display unit, it is not necessary for a person to perform classification registration work.

Further, according to the present invention, the video information is sequentially registered (accumulated) by giving a file name according to the time by the clock for each preset time amount.
Since the visual interface is formed by the list display unit, incorrect classification is prevented. Further, the visual interface makes it easy to grasp the video information.

Further, according to the present invention, by referring to the absolute time information, the oldest video information among the stored video information is specified, and the video information is deleted,
The work of deleting video data can now be automated, and the latest video information can always be known.

[0012]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings.

[First Embodiment] FIG. 1 shows a first embodiment according to the present invention.
FIG. 1 is a block configuration diagram showing a schematic configuration of a video management display device that stores, manages, accesses, and uses TV images of
Reference numeral 1 is a video input unit, 12 is a calculation control unit, 13 is a list display unit, 14 is a display display, 15 is a clock, 16 is a video storage unit, 17 is an absolute time information storage unit, and 18 is an instruction input unit.

The image input section 11 includes an antenna, a tuner,
Computation control unit 12 is composed of an A / D converter, etc., and receives a TV signal from an antenna by a tuner and digitizes it.
The video information (video data) is sent out sequentially.

The calculation control unit 12 is a central processing unit (CP).
U), and (1) sequentially transferring the video data sent from the video input unit 11 to the video storage unit 16,
(2) At the same time as sending the video data to the video storage unit 16, the current time (hours, minutes, seconds) is obtained from the clock 15, and the pointer information indicating the location where the video data is stored and the current time are combined to make an absolute value. Accumulated in the time information accumulation unit 17,
(3) A list of the list display unit 13 is created.

The list display unit 13 is composed of a buffer memory and temporarily holds the list. A specific example of the list display will be described later.

The display 14 is, for example, a CR.
A T-display, a liquid crystal display or the like is used to display a list or video information.

The clock 15 is composed of a clock generator and is used for giving a file name based on absolute time to unit video information (absolute time information: file) at a predetermined time based on the clock.

The video storage unit 16 is composed of, for example, a hard disk and hardware for video compression. The video data sent from the calculation control unit 12 is compression-encoded and then recorded on the hard disk.

The absolute time information storage unit 17 is composed of a hard disk and holds the relationship between the absolute time information and the video information in the form as shown in FIG. 4, for example. The column 41 in FIG. 4 holds absolute time information, and the column 42 in FIG. 4 holds a pointer indicating the location where video information is stored, specifically, information such as the hard disk cylinder number and sector number. To do. As a simple implementation method of this table, there is a method of using a file management table provided by the operating system (absolute time information is used as a file name and video information is managed as a file). For this method (one implementation method), see AS Tanenbaum, "Operating System".
s: Design and Implimentation, "Prentiec-Hall, 1987.

The instruction input unit 18 is composed of a keyboard, a mouse, and the like, and is used to issue an instruction to read out the image information and an instruction to change the setting of the unit time of the absolute time information.

In such a video management display device, first, the process of storing and registering video data will be described. The video input unit 11 receives a television signal by a tuner, digitizes it, and sequentially sends video information (video data) to the calculation control unit 12. In the calculation control unit 12, the video data sent from the video input unit 11 is stored in the video storage unit 1.
Sequentially transfer to 6. The video storage unit 16 is composed of, for example, a hard disk and hardware for video compression, and records the video data sent from the calculation control unit 12 in the hard disk after compression coding. The calculation control unit 12 sends the video data to the video storage unit 16 and at the same time obtains the current time (hour, minute, second) from the clock 15.
The absolute time information storage unit 17 stores a pair of pointer information indicating the location where the video data is stored and the current time. In this case, the time obtained from the clock 15, that is, the broadcast time of the television program is stored as "absolute time information about television video".

The video management display device of this embodiment has a structure in which absolute time information automatically obtained from the clock is added as an index to the video. As a result, unlike the conventional video database, the troublesome work (registration work) of adding a keyword or classifying by a person becomes unnecessary. Therefore, erroneous classification by a person does not occur, and a search failure due to a classification error does not occur.

Further, it is difficult to think that the classification of the video information is accepted by all people, and it is unlikely that it will be accepted by all people. However, in the case of this embodiment, the video information is indexed for each absolute time information, and Since the list is displayed based on this index, it is easy for everyone to accept.

The list display section displays a list of images for 24 hours in units of "1 hour". The list display is displayed on the display display 14 as shown in FIG.
The horizontally long rectangular portion in FIG. 2 indicates each time zone 21, and 00:00 to 23:00 are displayed. In addition, a plurality of images 22 are displayed in each time zone 21. In this embodiment, each image 22 is an array of images (6 images such as 00:00, 0:10, 020) extracted every 10 minutes. In TV broadcasting, the program often starts and ends at good times such as 0 minutes and 30 minutes, so as shown in Fig. 2, displaying the list in chronological order with "1 hour" as a unit finds the video that I want. It is suitable for Furthermore, there is news after noon, and baseball relay is at night 7
Prior knowledge, such as from time to time, facilitates search. The visual interface also makes it easy to search for a desired video by relying on the broadcast time on the program guide published in newspapers and the like.

The display procedure (access) of the visual interface will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. First, the unit of absolute time information is, for example, "1".
Initially set to "time" (step 801).

Next, the layout information (803) is read according to the set unit of the absolute time information (step 802). The layout information defines various conditions relating to the layout, such as at which position, at what size, and how many images are arranged when the list display as shown in FIG. 2 is performed. Different ones are prepared according to the unit. For example, the time unit is "10 minutes"
If the setting is made, another layout information is read and a list display as shown in FIG. 3 is performed. A process of extracting the video information stored in 806 while referring to the absolute time information, arranging the screen according to the layout information (803) (step 805), and transferring the video information to the list display unit 13 (step 812). Repeat until there are no more images to display (step 804).

When the video desired to be viewed is found in the list display of FIG. 2, the calculation control unit 12 starts reproduction of the video by instructing the video with the instruction input unit 18. As shown in FIG. 5, when the instruction is input, the instruction input is detected (step 807). If the instruction is video reproduction (step 808), the designated video is reproduced (step 808). Step 809). The instruction input unit may be a pointing device such as a mouse, or may be a system such as a remote controller of a TV for designating a number. Instead of starting the playing of the video, a video summary, for example a thinned video, may be played and the video on demand center may be accessed for viewing the full video for viewing in a pay-per-view. It is also possible to accept an instruction input for copying only a required program to another medium, such as a magneto-optical disk.

Displaying a list in a fine time unit for more detailed information on the video content and for a rougher unit for the outline has an effect of enabling quick and easy access to the video image. . For example, by giving a specific instruction from the instruction input section, the list display section displays the details of the specified one hour of video content by "1.
A list is displayed in the form as shown in Fig. 3 in units of "0 minutes". Each numerical value 31 at the left end of the horizontally long rectangular display frame 30 is 0 minutes, 10
Minutes, 20 minutes and numerical values for every 10 minutes are displayed. Further, in each rectangular display frame 30, a plurality of minute unit images 32 are displayed from left to right. That is, in the minute unit image 32, representative ones of the scenes that appear during 10 minutes are arranged. Instruction input unit 18 (eg mouse)
When the calculation control unit 12 (CPU) is notified of the change of the unit time from, the list is rewritten according to the processing from step 810 of the flowchart of FIG.

When the instruction input is detected (step 807) and the instruction changes the unit of absolute time (step 810), the process flow is changed by resetting the absolute time unit (step 811). The layout information corresponding to the subsequent unit is read (step 802) and redisplayed (steps 804 and 805). The method of extracting the representative screen is, for example, to detect the transition point (cut point) of the scene,
The images may be arranged side by side, or the image with a telop may be extracted from the images in different scenes. In addition, it is possible to add a device so that the commercial (CM) is not displayed as a representative screen.

Next, the process of deleting video data will be described. When video data is registered one after another, it becomes necessary to delete old data due to the limitation of storage capacity. In the conventional database, it was necessary to manually specify which data should be deleted, but if the oldest data is deleted by referring to the absolute time information, the manual deletion work becomes unnecessary. That is, it becomes possible to successively accumulate images without worrying about the storage capacity. If you want to store TV video information, for example, if you delete the old video that has been accumulated before 24 hours (that is, if you have not deleted anything within the last 24 hours) Recently, the video for the last one day will be accumulated, managed, and made available.

According to this embodiment, when the video information is sequentially stored in the video information storage unit, it is automatically filed and given a file name for each set absolute time information, and the absolute time information is stored. Since the oldest data is referred to and automatically deleted from the oldest data, registration and deletion of video information becomes easy.

[Embodiment 2] FIG. 6 shows another embodiment of the present invention.
That is, it is a block diagram showing a configuration of a video management display device according to a second embodiment. The video management display device includes a calculation control unit 51, a list display unit 52, a display display 53, a CDR.
It has an OM 54, an instruction input section 55, and a video deck 56. This embodiment relates to a recording reservation interface for CATV and television broadcasting using a CDROM. In the CDROM 54, a TV program announcement to be broadcast next week is stored as video information, and the broadcast date and time of the program is stored as absolute time information. Of course, the video information may be stored in a medium other than the CDROM, or the information may be accessed via a network. The calculation control unit 51 uses the CDR
The absolute time information stored in the OM (54) is read out, and the summary information of the program is displayed on the list display unit 52, for example, in accordance with the natural order of the absolute time information (in this case, the order of date and time: chronological order). Layout as shown in Figure 2,
Display on the display 53.

By viewing the summary display screen of the program of interest on the list display screen, it is possible to easily decide whether or not to record the program. At this time, for example, if a picture such as a picture-story show that is automatically created by dropping frames is used as a summary picture, a large amount of picture information can be stored in a storage medium such as a CDROM. It is suitable.

The video summary may be, for example, a movie preview video or an automatically created summary video. Japanese Patent Application No. 5-154
No. 22, gazette "method and apparatus for creating a quick-view video".

The summary video does not have to be a moving image, but may be a still image, text information, or hypertext.

Further, a still image may be reduced and arranged as shown in FIG. 7, or a still image 71 and text information 72 may be combined as shown in FIG.

When the program to be recorded is decided, the broadcast start time is transmitted from the instruction input section 55 to the calculation control section 51.
The calculation control unit 51 refers to the information such as the channel, the broadcast date, the broadcast start time, and the program length written in the CDROM 54, and sends a recording reservation command to the VCR 56.

As described above, the invention made by the present inventor is
Although the present invention has been specifically described based on the above-mentioned embodiments, the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiments, and it goes without saying that various modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the invention. For example, when the video storage unit is located at a remote place, the system on the user side and the system on the storage side may be connected by a network. In the first embodiment, the absolute time information is automatically obtained from the clock, but even if a person inputs the absolute time information such as the shooting date and time using a keyboard or the like, the video data registration work becomes easy. The effects of the present invention are not impaired. This is because the task of inputting absolute time information is much simpler than the task of classifying images or assigning keywords, and is a simple task that anyone can do immediately. On the other hand, absolute time information is absolute because it is unique to the video).

The video information and the absolute time information may be stored in different media. For example,
The original video may be stored on a video tape, and the summary video and absolute time information may be stored on a hard disk that can be accessed at high speed from a computer. Although the unit of the absolute time is "1 hour" or "10 minutes" in the embodiment, various units such as year, month, day, week, hour, minute, second can be used.

[0041]

The effects obtained by the typical ones of the inventions disclosed in the present application will be briefly described as follows. According to the image management and display device of the present invention, a visual interface is provided that allows the user to visually understand where the desired image information is contained. Therefore, the desired image can be obtained without knowing the classification structure of the image. Information can be easily known.

Further, according to the video management display device of the present invention, the video information is automatically filed and registered by giving the file name according to the absolute time, and the video information (video data which exceeds the set video information amount is recorded. ) Is automatically deleted from the oldest one, so the process of registering and deleting video information can be done easily.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block configuration diagram showing a configuration of a video management display device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a 24-hour video list display interface in the video management display device of the present embodiment.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a 60-minute video list display interface in the video management display device of the present embodiment.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing a correlation between absolute time information and video information in the video management display device of this embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a list display processing procedure in the video management display device of the present embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a video management display device according to another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a video summary display showing a list of still images in a video management display device according to another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a video summary display in which a still image and a text are simultaneously displayed on a video management display device according to another embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

11 ... Video input section, 12 ... Calculation control section, 13 ... List display section, 14 ... Display display, 15 ... Clock, 16 ...
Image storage unit, 17 ... Absolute time information storage unit, 21 ... Time zone, 22 ... Image, 51 ... Calculation control unit, 52 ... List display unit, 53 ... Display display, 54 ... CDROM, 55
... instruction input section, 56 ... VCR, 71 ... still image,
72 ... Text information.

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A calculation control unit, a video input unit for sending a video to the calculation control unit, a video information storage unit for storing video information as the video or video summary, a clock for issuing time information, and the calculation control. An instruction input section for inputting a necessary signal to the section, an absolute time information storage section for holding the relationship between the absolute time information and the image information related to the image information, and the image information according to a natural order of the absolute time information. Alternatively, the video management display device has a list display section for displaying a part of the video information and a display display for displaying the contents of the list display section. 2. The video management display device according to claim 1, further comprising an instruction input unit capable of freely setting a time unit of the absolute time information. 3. The video management display device according to claim 1, wherein the calculation control unit monitors the video information amount of the video information storage unit, and the video information amount is a predetermined storage amount. If it exceeds, specify the oldest video information among the video information stored in the video information storage unit,
An image management display device comprising means for deleting the specified image information.