Patent ID: 6278446
Filing Date: 2001-08-21
Classification: G06F,G06K

Abstract:
A system for interactively organizing and browsing raw video to facilitate browsing of video archives, comprising:automatic video organizing means for automatically organizing a raw video into a hierarchical structure that depicts the video's organized contents, said automatic video organizing means including shot grouping means for automatically grouping shots, which represent a continuous action in time and space, into groups of visually similar shots, each group of shots capturing a given structure in the raw video; anduser interface means for allowing a user to view and manually edit the hierarchical structure, said user interface means including tree view interface means for allowing the user to view the groups of visually similar shots, create new groups of visually similar shots, and modify the groups of visually similar shots, said tree view interface means including update means for determining whether any image portions of a shot merged with another shot by the user are similar, wherein when said update means finds similar image portions, said update means generates partial match templates which blocks dissimilar image portions of remaining shots and automatically merges the remaining shots that have similar image portions, wherein when said update means does not find any similar image portions, said update means determines whether audio streams of the two merged shots are similar, wherein when said update means finds similar audio streams, said update means searches other shots in the groups for similar audio streams and automatically merges other shots with similar audio streams together, wherein when said update means does not find any similar audio streams in the two merged shots, the update means repeats the user's action on all siblings of the merged shot.