Media article composition

摘要

A method and apparatus for the automatic composition of media articles is disclosed. Previous attempts to do this have involved the manual production of a detailed framework listing the types of media elements that might be inserted into the slots specified in that framework and the subsequent selection of media elements for those slots. The present invention improves upon this by associating metadata (51) with the media elements in a content store (50), which metadata includes content data indicating the content of what is portrayed by that media element, and by using templates (52) each of which specifies one or more requirements for media elements and further using user profiles (53) which contain data specific to a respective user, to enable a personalised media article to be assembled for a respective user by selecting for inclusion in the media article, media elements which match the requirements specified in the template, possibly after having been resolved by examining the user profile.