Patent ID: 8019183

Claim:
A production apparatus for index information with link information, comprising: a key information unit which determines an initial key region in a first frame of a plurality of frames, which is a partial image of an entire image in the first frame, based on an input from an operator and applies region identification information to the initial key region in the first frame, wherein the region identification information corresponds to at least one pixel value of the initial key region in the first frame and the plurality of frames are each associated with a respective time code, and determines a final key region in a final frame of the plurality of frames, which is a partial image of an entire image in the final frame based on an input from the operator, the time code associated with the final frame being subsequent to the time code associated with the first frame; a follow-up unit which automatically determines whether a key region in a second frame of the plurality of frames includes at least one pixel value similar to the initial key region in the first frame, determines a position of the key region in the second frame based on an initial position of the initial key region in the first frame and a final position of the final key region in the final frame, and applies region identification information to the key region in the second frame when the key region in the second frame is determined to include the at least one pixel value similar to the initial key region in the first frame, wherein the time code associated with the second frame is subsequent to the time code associated with the first frame and prior to the time code associated with the final frame; a database which stores a corresponding relationship between region identification information applied to at least one of the key regions of the plurality of frames received from the key information unit or the follow-up unit and link information which provides access to information related to the at least one of the key regions; and an information embedding section configured to refer to said database to embed the link information corresponding to the at least one of the key regions into index information which associates the region identification information applied to the at least one of the key regions and time information.