DYNAMIC MODIFICATION OF MULTIMEDIA CONTENT

摘要

A method and system for manipulating or modifying identifiable objects in a stan dard broadcast or Internet-based multimedia stream according to a control specification and a c ontent specification. Viewers and/or organizations can independently specify acceptable levels of content on multiple dimensions to satisfy the content specification while minimi zing the filtering or blocking to the viewers. A "fuzz ball" control specification is provided for masking some portion of a video frame. Several fuzz ball specifications can be overlaid to ad dress multidimensional content specifications or rating systems. The manipulation of t he multimedia stream can take place at the client (set-top box or computer), intermediate node , the content server or a combination thereof. Proxy servers can modify content specifications for outgoing requests, enabling organizations to specify intranet-wide policies. Multicasting can be supported by using a single stream delivered to multiple clients, each modifying the video using a different specification. The specification to facilitate modification can be done at diffe rent granularity levels: the video, a group of frames, or individual frame level and can also be time-based. Various protocols can be used to provide the content and/or control specificatio n, including the VBI of a standard broadcast, PICS, RTSP and MPEG protocols.