Techniques for constructing and browsing a hierarchical video structure

摘要

Techniques for providing an intuitive methodology for a user to control the process of constructing and/or browsing a semantic hierarchy of a video content with a computer controlled graphical user interface by utilizing a tree view of a video, a list view of a current segment, a view of visual rhythm and a view of hierarchical status bar. A graphical user interface (GUI) is used for constructing and browsing a hierarchical video structure. The GUI allows the easier video browsing of the final hierarchical video structure as well as the efficient construction or modeling of the intermediate hierarchies into the final one. The modeling can be done manually, automatically or semi-automatically. Especially during the process of manual or semi-automatic modeling, the convenient GUI increases the speed of the construction process, allowing the quick mechanism for checking the current status of intermediate hierarchies being constructed. The GUI also provides a set of modeling operations that allow the user to manually transform an initial sequential structure or any unwanted hierarchical structure into a desirable hierarchical structure in an instant. The GUI further provides a method for constructing the hierarchical video structure semi-automatically by applying the automatic semantic clustering and the manual modeling operations in any order.