Patent ID: 8855796

Claim:
A music-segment detection method comprising: a data input step of inputting audio/video data including an audio signal and a video signal; a plurality of candidate-music-segment detection steps of detecting, by utilizing a plurality of candidate-music-segment detection units, from the audio signal, respective candidate music-segments of the audio/video data, based on a plurality of criteria different from each other; and a music-segment detection step of detecting a music segment based on the plurality of candidate music-segments each detected by the plurality of candidate-music-segment detection steps, wherein the plurality of criteria includes a first criterion and a second criterion, the first criterion has the detection characteristic configured to detect a music scene wherein the first criteria is set based on whether or not the characteristic of the audio signal corresponds to a class model determined to be a music scene among a plurality of predetermined audio class models, the second criterion has the detection characteristic configured to detect a music segment wherein the second criterion is set based on the difference between the left and right channels of the audio signal, wherein the music-segment detection step comprises: searching for the start time of the candidate music-segment detected according to the second criterion around the start time of the candidate music-segment detected according to the first criterion; adopting the start time found in the searching as the start time of the music segment; searching for the end time of the candidate music-segment detected according to the second criterion around the end time of the candidate music-segment detected according to the first criterion; and adopting the end time found in the searching as the end time of the music segment and wherein the plurality of candidate-music-segment detection steps includes a plurality of respective correction steps each correcting the detected respective candidate music-segments: and the music-segment detection step detects a music segment based on the respective candidate music-segments, instead of the plurality of candidate music-segments, each corrected by the plurality of correction steps.