Patent ID: 7362946

Claim:
A computer-implementable method of rhythmically editing an input video sequence to form an output edited sequence of shorter duration than the input video sequence without requiring a user to manually edit the input video sequence, the input video sequence comprising at least one input clip, each input clip being formed at least by video content captured between two points in time and thereby defining a duration of the input clip, the method comprising the steps of: inputting the input video sequence into a computer to implement the method; extracting duration data associated with the duration of each input clip of the input video sequence; processing the duration data of the at least one input clip according to editing rules to form editing instruction data, the editing instruction data being configured to define output segments from the at least one input clip of the input video sequence, the editing rules indicating a sequence of the output segments and a plurality of predetermined segment durations including a first duration and a second duration, said processing of the duration data comprising: (i) identifying, from the input video sequence, the sequence of the output segments, each of the output segment having one of the predetermined segment durations, and being derived from a single input clip of the input video sequence; and (ii) identifying, from the input video sequence, discardable portions each having at least a predetermined third duration, the discardable portions separating the segments of the rhythmic sequence, there being at least one discardable portion identified from each input clip of the input video sequence; and processing the at least one input clip of the input video sequence according to the editing instruction data to discard the discardable portions and to form the output edited sequence from the sequence of said segments.