Patent ID: 8812311

Claim:
A method for summarizing an audiovisual presentation, comprising: a) providing an audiovisual presentation having a first temporal length, i) a plurality of shot segments, each shot segment comprising a segment component; ii) a plurality of secondary segments selected from the group comprising a dialogue segment, a non-dialogue segment, a non-dialogue segment with music segment, and an audience reaction segment; b) rating each shot segment by automatically determining a shot segment significance value for each shot segment, the method comprising: determining at least two segment component significance values for at least one segment component characteristic including determining whether the segment component is a noun, pronoun, reference to a story character, a frequency of occurrence of the segment component, a match of the segment component to a predetermined database of segment components; and combining the at least two segment component significance values to determine the shot segment significance value; c) determining the secondary significance value of one or more of the secondary segments wherein the secondary significance value weights the significance value of the shot segment; d) receiving a user generated time significance value threshold; e) using the significance value threshold to select the shot segment if the weighted shot segment significance value exceeds the significance value threshold, and delete the shot segment if the shot segment significance value is below the significance value threshold; f) combining each shot segment with the weighted shot segment significance value exceeding the significance value threshold into a summarized version of the audiovisual presentation; and g) providing the summarized version of the audiovisual presentation, the audiovisual presentation having a second temporal length.