Patent ID: 8205227
Filing Date: 2012-06-19
Classification: G11B,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method to designate visual content that is available for delivery over a network that correspond to programs distributed according to a predetermined schedule comprising: obtaining multiple respective program metadata records that correspond to respective scheduled programs and that include program attribute information indicative of respective attributes of the respective scheduled programs; obtaining multiple respective visual content item metadata records that respectively correspond to respective visual content items available for delivery over the network and that include respective visual content item attribute information indicative of respective attributes of respective visual content items; comparing attribute information of a given respective program metadata record with respective attribute information of multiple respective content metadata records to measure similarity between corresponding attributes of the program metadata record and attributes of the multiple respective content metadata records; determining respective program-content attribute match scores for respective compared content metadata records as a function of a measure of similarity between the program attributes of the given respective program metadata record and corresponding visual content item attributes of respective content metadata records and of weighting of respective attribute comparisons; selecting a respective visual content item based upon the determined program-content attribute match scores; and producing a data structure in a computer useable storage device that includes information that identifies a scheduled program that corresponds to the given respective program metadata record and that indicates a location from which the selected respective visual content item can be obtained; wherein the program attribute information includes respective scheduled program character strings; wherein the visual content attribute information includes respective visual content character strings; and further including: producing a first transformation of at least one of the respective scheduled program attribute character strings of the given respective program metadata record to change a representation of the program character string to remove an expression or representation that is extraneous to differences between the scheduled program attribute information and respective visual content item attribute information so as to produce a respective first transformed scheduled program attribute character string; and producing a first transformation of a corresponding respective visual content item attribute character string of a respective visual content item metadata record to change a representation of the visual content item character string to remove an expression or a representation that is extraneous to differences between respective visual content item attribute information and the scheduled program attribute information so as to produce a respective first transformed visual content item attribute character string; wherein comparing includes producing respective first similarity score indicative of similarity of the respective first transformed scheduled program attribute character strings to respective first transformed visual content attribute character string; producing a second transformation of at least one of the respective first transformed scheduled program attribute character string of the given respective program metadata record to change a representation of the respective first transformed scheduled program attribute character string to remove an expression or a representation that is extraneous to differences between the first transformed scheduled program attribute information and the respective first transformed visual content item attribute information so as to produce a respective second transformed scheduled program attribute character string; and producing a second transformation of the respective first transformed visual content item attribute character string of the corresponding respective visual content item metadata record to change a representation of the respective first transformed visual content item attribute character string to remove an expression or a representation that is extraneous to differences between the first transformed scheduled program attribute information and the respective first transformed visual content item attribute information so as to produce a respective second transformed scheduled visual content item attribute character string; wherein comparing includes producing respective second similarity scores indicative of similarity of the second transformed scheduled program attribute character string to the respective second transformed visual content attribute character string.