Disclosed are a system, method, apparatus, and computer readable media containing instructions for displaying video files for rapid searching. In two different types of exemplary embodiments, a standalone video skimming system, and a video skimming system includes a server and a client system are disclosed, where the video file may be locally or remotely stored, or can be obtained from a live feed. The system displays many small windows simultaneously, in which different parts of the video chosen by the user are shown at the same time to shorten the skimming time. The video file is encoded using layered encoding to display smaller versions using lower layers, and without needing any processing to generate smaller versions of the video from the original full screen version. A video extractor is described for extracting the necessary bitstreams from a local video database containing layered encoded video files according to user specified window sizes, and distributing the signals over the electronic communications network channel. The system also includes a skimming control logic which can receive control commands from clients and invoke the video extractor to extract appropriate audio-visual signals there from for each command.
展开▼
