Patent ID: 7155441

Claim:
A computerized method executable by an audio visual information system, the method comprising: writing a data structure representing a description scheme for a multimedia sequence to a data store for subsequently querying the multimedia sequence, the description scheme containing relations corresponding to relationships between entities in the multimedia sequence, wherein the data structure comprises a graph having a set of vertices representing the entities and a set of edges representing the relations; determining the relations for representation by parameters to define fuzzy relationships, each parameter having numerical values representing confidence in the corresponding fuzzy relationship; obtaining at least one of a numerical value for each parameter, a description of the parameter containing a numerical value, and a description capable of setting the parameter dynamically; and modifying the numerical values representing the confidence in response to changes in the parameter as the multimedia sequence progresses, the numerical values calculated using a membership function m R (x)=g∘ƒ(x), where R is the set of edges over the set of vertices A×B, g defines a function for the parameter over a parameter space PS, and ƒ is a parameterization function ƒ: A×B→ PS, g: PS.