Patent ID: 6993245
Filing Date: 2006-01-31
Classification: G11B,H04N,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method for detecting one or more commercial breaks in a set of audiovisual content spanning a duration of time, each commercial break including one or more commercials, the method comprising the steps of: identifying candidate times within the duration of time spanned by the set of audiovisual content based on an evaluation of one or more cues identified in the audiovisual content, each candidate time representing a possible starting and/or ending time of a commercial; assigning a score to each candidate time; evaluating, for each of one or more candidate times, 1) one or more secondary cues that are each different from the one or more cues used to identify the candidate time, and/or 2) the relationship between the candidate time and one or more other candidate times, wherein the score assigned to the candidate time can be adjusted based on the evaluation; and constructing the one or more commercial breaks based on an evaluation of 1) the scores of the candidate times after the step of evaluating and 2) a relationship between, or relationships among, the candidate times, including by: