System and method for labeling elements in animated movies using matte data

摘要

A system and method for labeling animation movies and for displaying such labels is described. The method of labeling includes identifying the individual figures in the animated movie frame and creating a corresponding matte frame which relates the regions of the figures to labels. Such labels can be textual descriptions, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or other data. The method of displaying such labels includes accepting a user input during the playing of an animated movie and then displaying the label associated with the figure selected. Multiple labels can be linked to the same figure in a movie, so that different labels are available to meet the needs of a variety of users. For example, the same figure can have different labels which offer descriptions in foreign languages or for different education levels.