274 results about "Multimedia streams" patented technology

The underlying invention generally relates to the field of mobile computing, wireless communication, and interactive multimedia applications in mobile communication networks with high-speed access. Particularly, it refers to a customized multimedia information channel system presenting advertisement information (124a) and, if desired, other multimedia streams on a mobile communication and computing device (100) equipped with a Liquid Crystal Display (102) designed to meet modern business-to-business (B2B) requirements. In this connection, interactive operation is guaranteed by a digital wireless data and control link (108) between said mobile computing device (100) and a product (122) to be advertised. In contrast to conventional solutions, said mobile computing device (100) comprises a User Control Board (101) with an Application Programming Interface (105c) providing an intercommunication between a software routine (105b), said User Control Board (101), the display (102) of said device (100), and an additional hard-disk drive (111) for storing content data (124a) to be rendered on the display (102) of said device (100). Thereby, said User Control Board (101) is capable of communicating with a specific file server (118) over a bi-directional air interface (108) and a Wireless Local Area Network (120) by transmitting user requests (123) and receiving content information (124a), receiving control information (124b) from a remote control device (116), and transmitting status information (124c) to the remote control device (116). Furthermore, said device (100) is capable of receiving identification information (126) about the product (122) from a tag device (114) attached to said product (122).

Embodiments of the present invention allow users to tag a multimedia program or stream with data or pointers to external information related to content of the multimedia program. Users in a social network may tag various aspects of the content, such as a particular actor, a type of car, jewelry, a location, a phrase, etc. This tagging information may then be linked to various websites that provide further information about the tagged content and may be keyed to video offset times.

A packet encapsulation scheme for multiplexing application sessions—Lightweight IP Encapsulation (LIPE)—is described. An LIPE packet comprises at least one multiplexing header (NH) and associated multimedia data packet (MDP). The LIPE packet uses UDP / IP as transport. An MH field further comprises a 16-bit a user identifier (UID) field, an 11 bit length indicator (LNG) field, a 1 bit “more” (M) field and an optional payload type / class of service (PT / CoS) field comprising 8 bits.

A server at the edge of a broadband network distributes multimedia content streams to clients, while ensuring that the first data delivered to each client is key data (milestones) needed for correctly decoding the stream content. This is obtained by buffering the packets in the incoming stream and transmitting the packets from the buffer in an outgoing stream, starting with the most recent milestone placed in the buffer before a request to join the respective incoming stream is received. As the writing to and reading from the buffer are performed at different rates, the incoming and outgoing streams are eventually synchronized, at which point the client may be switched to receive the incoming stream directly.

The present invention relates to a method and related system and related devices for forwarding packets of a plurality of multimedia streams where the packets of the plurality of multimedia streams being forwarded from a multimedia source towards a plurality of multimedia endpoints over a communications network, where the method comprises a step of classifying the packets of the plurality of multimedia streams based on the usage of each of the multimedia streams.

A method and apparatus dynamically control data traffic, such as multimedia streams, needing a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) and normal data traffic, according to a variable communication environment. The method of dynamically controlling traffic in a wireless station includes reading header information of a packet received from an upper layer and determining a type of the packet, setting a priority according to the type of the packet, adjusting a size of a variable buffer by performing appropriate dynamic buffering according to the type of the packet, enqueuing the packet in a fixed buffer if the priority is high and enqueuing the packet in the variable buffer if the priority is low, and transmitting the packet enqueued in the fixed buffer to a destination station prior to the packet enqueued in the variable buffer.

A network performance monitor and an associated method for monitoring the perceived transmission quality of a packetized multimedia signal encoded by a first codec are provided. The monitor includes a packet processor for performing real time direct counting of received and lost packets in the burst and gap states in the packet stream carrying the multimedia signal. A data processor is provided for determining packet loss distribution parameters using the burst and gap packet counters provided by the packet processor. In one aspect of the invention, the data processor is operative to compute an effective equipment impairment factor from the packet loss distribution parameters for a reference codec having known transmission impairments associated therewith, for assessing the network contribution to the perceived transmission quality of the multimedia signal.

First control information, generated according to a first protocol version, for configuring an audiovisual device to present a multimedia stream, may be generated. A first data structure specifying that the first control information is of the first protocol version may be generated. A plurality of packets, including a multimedia stream, the first control information, and the first data structure, may be generated and transmitted. Second control information, generated according to a second protocol version, for configuring an audiovisual device to present a multimedia stream, may be generated. The first data structure may be modified to include information about the second control information. A second plurality of packets, including the modified first data structure, the first control information, a multimedia stream specified by the first control information, the second control information, and a multimedia stream specified by the second control information, may be generated.

A system measures viewership of multimedia programs such as television programs, pay-per-view sporting events, and video-on-demand movies. Viewership data from a plurality of multimedia programs may be compared to determine ratings for the multimedia programs. Multimedia streams en route to set top boxes may be monitored using packet inspection to identify the multimedia program or programs included in the multimedia streams. An electronic table or array may be stored and updated with viewership statistics of monitored multimedia programs. Some embodiments track the total number of households or televisions that are powered on in a viewing area. Ratings are available substantially in real time by accessing a stored table with viewership information or by frequently polling a plurality of stored values to determine which multimedia program is being viewed by all or substantially all viewers in an area.

Computer implemented method, system and computer usable program code for detecting topic shift boundaries in a multimedia stream. A computer implemented method for detecting topic shift boundaries in a multimedia stream includes receiving a multimedia stream, and performing multimodal analysis on the multimedia stream to locate a plurality of temporal positions within the multimedia stream at which topic changes have an increased likelihood of occurring to provide a sequence of multimedia portions. Characteristics for a sliding window for each multimedia portion in the sequence of multimedia portions are automatically determined, and topic shift boundaries are detected in each multimedia portion by applying a text-based topic shift detector over the media stream's text transcript using a sliding window, wherein the sliding window used with each multimedia portion has the characteristics determined from its respective multimedia portion.

A multicasting system for reception of multimedia information comprising: a content switch coupled to a multimedia content source and at least one multimedia smart terminal. The multimedia content source includes a plurality of multimedia contents, wherein each multimedia content is supported by a primary multimedia stream transmitted over a primary dedicated channel having a primary bandwidth. At least one multimedia smart terminal is configured to receive from the content switch over a network each multimedia content as a secondary multimedia stream transmitted over a secondary channel having a secondary bandwidth. The content switch includes a bandwidth scaler configured to scale each primary multimedia stream to a plurality of secondary multimedia sub-streams that are substantially synchronized. The multimedia smart terminal includes a smart terminal sub-stream switch configured to switch among the plurality of secondary multimedia sub-streams in order to select a substantially optimum secondary multimedia sub-stream. The substantially optimum secondary multimedia sub-stream includes a substantially optimum relationship between an error rate level determined at the time of reception of a multimedia content and the quality of reception of a multimedia content.

Media streams are provided from a server computer to client computers in a network system. The media streams are monitored and the streams becoming globally unsynchronized is detected. When the streams become unsynchronized, action is taken to resynchronize the streams, such as by altering the presentation timeline of at least one of the media streams.

A method and system for integrated personal content access have been disclosed. The system includes a gateway which provides simulated multimedia streams by extracting digital content from a web site, converting the digital content to a simulated video stream, and sending the simulated video stream to a target display device. Neither the web site nor the target display device need to change to provide this feature. The gateway is further able to provide a shadow download feature, where if a user downloads content, the user also has access to other resolutions or formats of the same content via the gateway for his various devices. When the gateway receives a request to access the content, it obtains identifiers for the user's devices, and determines a format corresponding to each of the devices. The gateway retrieves the content for each device in their respective formats and forwards them to the respective device.

A system and method of network adaptive real-time multimedia streaming, in which a receiving bit rate of a packet that is received from a client is monitored, and the monitoring result is fed back to a streaming server, and a transfer bit rate of a packet that is transmitted by the streaming server are provided. The streaming system includes a streaming path on which packetized data are streamed, a streaming server for transmitting the packetized data at a first bit rate through the streaming path in response to a control signal, and a client for receiving the packetized data at a second bit rate according to the state of the streaming path, comparing the first bit rate with the second bit rate and generating the control signal corresponding to the comparison result. The first bit rate is controlled in response to the control signal. The size of packets and an interval between the packets are controlled by the first bit rate. The state of the network is sensed, and thus the transfer bit rate can be automatically controlled according to the state of the network.

The Electronic Content Asset Publication System operates as an overlay application on the native multi-media communication network to receive individual subscriber requests for a selected electronic content asset and deliver that asset to the requesting subscriber. This system acquires, stores, publishes, distributes, accesses and processes electronic content on demand and delivers this content in the format of the subscriber's communication device over a selected multi-media communications infrastructure. This system provides access to specific subscriber-initiated electronic content assets that are of interest to the subscriber. The electronic content assets comprise individual multi-media streams, multi-media files or streams of multi-media files, initiated and published by individual subscribers rather than the mass media distributed by conventional content sources.

A current mobile multimedia signal time slice is captured using a mobile MM receiver in response to a current mobile multimedia stream-identifying command input. The current mobile multimedia signal time slice contains at least one portion of a currently selected mobile multimedia stream. At least one anticipated mobile multimedia time slice is selectively captured. The at least one anticipated mobile multimedia time slice contains at least one portion of a corresponding anticipated mobile multimedia stream.

A system and method for wirelessly transmitting audiovisual information. A first plurality of packets including audiovisual information may be generated. A second plurality of packets including error correction coding information for the audiovisual information may be generated. Control information for associating the error correction coding information with the audiovisual information may be generated, and a third plurality of packets including the control information may also be generated. The plurality of packets, including the first, second, and third pluralities of packets, may be transmitted to a mobile device in a wireless manner. The control information may inform the mobile device of the association of the first error correction coding information with the audiovisual information.

A method for efficiently transmitting several multimedia streams to one or more multimedia receivers is disclosed comprising: defining a minimum acceptable time for rendering a multimedia stream to a user when the user selects a particular stream; defining a packet size for packets containing data for each multimedia stream, the packet size defined based on one or more performance characteristics of mass storage devices on the one or more multimedia receivers; concurrently transmitting the packets for each multimedia stream to the one or more multimedia receivers; continually storing the multimedia streams on the mass storage devices; and playing back the multimedia content from the mass storage devices responsive to a user tuning to a particular multimedia stream when a delay greater than the minimum acceptable time would otherwise result waiting for a next packet containing data for the particular multimedia stream to arrive.

A method and corresponding equipment (11) for encoding different types of objects of a multimedia data stream so as to provide improved overall quality (Q), according to relationships (11b) between quality (Qi) and encoding size / transmission rate (Ri) for each object, and according to penalties (11c) for removing objects from the multimedia data stream. A multimedia data stream is provided in which the quality of the different objects tends to be similar according to rules provided by the invention for assigning a value of quality to each of the different kinds of objects of the multimedia stream.

A system and method are described for providing drift compensation for a multimedia receiver which processes multimedia streams from a plurality of satellite transponders and / or cable / broadcast carriers. In one embodiment, the average drift amount for all multimedia signals in a first group of multimedia signals is calculated and, based on the calculation, the drift of the entire group is corrected. This drift is referred to as system drift. In addition, the difference in drift between each individual multimedia signal and the system drift amount is used to correct the individual drift for each multimedia signal.

A mechanism to configure power save parameters of a wireless client station. When data frames carrying voice, video, or other multimedia traffic are received at the client station via a wireless link, a frame rate of the received data frames is measured for a period of time. Then a power save parameter of the client station is configured based on the measuring to adjust delivery of the data frames to the client station during a power save state of the client station.

The present invention provides methods, devices, and systems for synchronizing group switching of multimedia streams for conferencing applications. More specifically, the present invention provides mechanisms for grouping, mapping, and switching endpoints for role-based multimedia collaboration.

The invention provides a universal audio / video redirection method for cloud access devices under the VDI environment, which includes the following steps: (1) a communication module, a virtual player and a GStreamer plug-in module are established in a client side; (2) a user carries out video-playing operation after remotely logging in a virtual desktop under the VDI environment on the client side, and a server side transmits control commands and multi-media stream data to the communication module by means of a communication protocol; (3) the communication module forwards the control commands and the multi-media stream data to the virtual player; (4) the virtual player loads the GStreamer plug-in module; (5) after the GStreamer plug-in module is loaded, the received data are forwarded to the GStreamer of the client side, and the GStreamer automatically creates a media-processing module to start playing audio and video. The invention realizes the smooth playing of audio and video when cloud access devices remotely access the virtual desktop under the VDI environment.

Synchronization of related packet data network streams is provided. Synchronization is achieved by inserting synchronization packets into data streams that are to be aligned with one another after transmission of those data streams across a network. More particularly, corresponding synchronization packets are inserted into the corresponding data streams at the same time, to serve as markers for performing synchronization of the data at the receiving end. The corresponding data streams may comprise an audio data stream and a corresponding video data stream.

Apparatus for distributing streaming multimedia to at least one end client over a network includes memory and at least one processor operatively connected to the memory. The processor is operative: (i) to receive the streaming multimedia from at least one multimedia source via at least one of a plurality of channels in the network; (ii) when a channel change request generated by the end client for changing a channel and corresponding multimedia content from the multimedia source is not detected, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at a first data rate; and (iii) when the channel change request has been detected, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at a first rate for a prescribed period of time after receiving the channel change request and, after the prescribed period of time, to deliver the at least one multimedia stream to the end client at the first data rate, wherein the second data rate is greater than the first data rate. The second data rate is greater than the first data rate.

Aspects of a method and system for managing network resources in audio / video bridging enabled networks are provided. In this regard, network resources reserved via AVB may be allocated for administrative and / or control traffic. Additionally, administrative and / or control data may be assigned highest priority for routing in the network. In this regard, priority of traffic may be determined via one or more bits of a VLAN tag associated with the traffic. For each AVB stream registered in the network, there may be a corresponding portion of the reserved network resources allocated for administrative and / or control data. The portion of reserved network resources allocated for administrative and / or control data may be based on past, present, or expected network statistics. Portions of the reserved resources not allocated for administrative and / or control data may be utilized for communicating one or more multimedia streams. In this regard, the unallocated resources may be distributed amongst the one or more multimedia streams. Allocating reserved resources for administrative and / or control traffic may ensure reliable communication of the administrative and / or control traffic, by preventing one or more multimedia streams from monopolizing network resources.

An apparatus and method for time synchronization of a plurality of multimedia streams are described. In one embodiment, the method includes the concurrent capture of multimedia data via a plurality of multimedia platforms. During the concurrent capture of the multimedia data, each of the multimedia platforms receives a synchronization signal from a synchronization generation unit. In response, each platform processes a received synchronization signal to generate a common reference clock signal among each of the platforms. Once the common clock signal is generated, each of the platforms synchronizes captured multimedia data to form multimedia stream data according to the common reference clock signal. As such, the plurality of multimedia platforms are able to perform collaborative signal processing tasks of multimedia streams, including, for example, array signal processing algorithms.

An apparatus and method are described for mapping a plurality of multimedia streams (e.g., received from a set of satellite transponders) across a lesser plurality of decoders. In one embodiment, arbitration logic allocates the multimedia streams to divide the decoding load equally among the group of decoders (or at least as equally as possible). Allocation may occur statically, when the system is initialized, or dynamically, as the streams are being processed. In addition, in one embodiment, the arbitration logic monitors the amount of multimedia data for each stream stored in a buffer and causes streams to be serviced by the decoders which have relatively more stored multimedia data.