NON-LINEAR REPRESENTATION OF VIDEO DATA

摘要

A method of representing video data in a non-linear paradigm. Video data are categorized into semantic content comprising multi-layer structure each denoting semantic reference, such as different cinematic entities. The semantic content is organized in a hierarchical structure wherein the top layer denotes global information while the lowest layer represents primitive information. The cinematic entities in the top layer are hyper-linked to the entities in the second layer. The entities in the second layer are hyper-linked to the third layer and so on. Each cinematic entity in the lowest layer is designated to a part of the video content and hyper-linked to the corresponding video data. The semantic content comprises hyper-linked video data in a N-to-N relationship. N-to-N relationship means the data are hyper-linked video data and the video data supports multiple access and multiple presentation. An apparatus for presenting categorized semantic content to users in which the video data can be linearly visualized and played piece-wise without transcoding. The hierarchical structure of the semantic content can also be visualized logically as relationship diagram and key-frame presentation. Users can browse the semantic content from the top layer down to the lowest layer. The video corresponding to each cinematic entity of the semantic content can be played separately as short video. And an apparatus for performing search over a repository of categorized semantic content of video data.