Patent ID: 7428696
Filing Date: 2008-09-23
Classification: H04L,H04N

Abstract:
1. A time synchronization system, comprising: a content processor receiving and storing multimedia content containing first segment time information as received content; a metadata processor receiving and storing segment metadata for the received content containing second segment time information as received metadata; a synchronizer extracting the first segment time information from the received content and the second segment time information from the received metadata in response to a content segment request signal of a user as first extracted segment time information and as second extracted segment time information, determining a first reference time point and a second reference time point from the first and the second extracted segment time information, respectively, correcting a relative time point of the received content using a difference between the first and the second reference time points as a corrected relative time point, and synchronizing the received content and metadata using the corrected relative time point; and a content segment browser for forwarding the content segment request signal to the synchronizer and reproducing a plurality of segments of the received content synchronized by the synchronizer, wherein the first segment time information comprises a first Global Positioning System (GPS) time information and a first decoding time stamp (DTS) time information, the second segment time information comprises a second GPS time information and a second DTS time information, and the first and the second reference time points are the first and the second DTS time information, respectively, and wherein: if the first GPS time information of the received content is ahead of the second GPS time information of the received metadata, the synchronizer causes a difference between the first and the second DTS time information (ΔT if the first GPS time information of the received content is behind the second GPS time information of the received metadata, the synchronizer causes the ΔT