Content processing for personal over-the-top network video recorder

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9332296-B2
Application number	US-201414157705-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 17, 2014
Priority date	Feb 12, 2013
Publication date	May 3, 2016
Grant date	May 3, 2016

Abstract

Live streaming video content is processed and stored for real-time delivery of the content, future VoD viewing of the content, and time-shifted viewing of the content, by manipulating a common manifest or playlist. Previously stored content may be reordered and/or recombined in order to provide a personalized content viewing experience.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for processing content to support network personal video recorder functions, comprising:
continually performing the steps of (i) acquiring real-time streaming source content containing a program, (ii) transcoding the acquired source content into distinct encodings to create respective content streams, and (iii) segmenting the content streams into segments and uploading the segments to one or more content delivery networks (CDNs) for retrieval and use in rendering the program at a media player;
generating manifests for the program and continually updating the manifests and uploading the updated manifests to the CDNs as the segments are uploaded to the CDNs, the manifests including a master manifest and set of network-personal-video-recorder (npvr) manifests for respective ones of the encodings, the master manifest including references to the set of npvr manifests to enable selection from among the encodings in rendering the program at the media player; and
detecting a program boundary of the program in the source content, and in response:
completing a current set of npvr manifests in current directories of the CDNs;
creating new directories in the CDNs and starting a new set of npvr manifests in the new directories; and
uploading subsequent segments and npvr manifest updates to the new directories.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the source content is audio/video content.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the program boundaries are specified in-band with the content (e.g., SCTE-35 cue tones).

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the program boundaries are specified out-of-band based off of wall-clock times (e.g., SCTE-118, proprietary EPG data, or fixed duration time schedules).

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the new directories for each program have a hierarchical directory structure having distinct hierarchical levels based on the program boundaries, the date and time the program is processed, and respective identifiers of the source stream and encoding.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein a new encryption key is generated for each new program.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein an existing encryption key is carried over to a new program npvr manifest.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the master manifest is an HTTP Live Streaming master manifest, the segments are HTTP Live Streaming segments, and the npvr manifests are non-sliding-window variant stream manifests that continuously grow until complete and then are ended with an ENDLIST tag, each npvr manifest including sequential references to all the segments of the program.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the program spans multiple sequential npvr manifests, and further including adding pointers to each npvr manifest to identify a sequentially preceding npvr manifest and a sequentially following npvr manifest.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: detecting advertisement boundaries and including advertisement boundary information in the npvr manifests to identify discontinuities in the content stream.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the advertisement boundaries are detected based on in-band SCTE-35 cue tones and SCTE-130 placement opportunity information.

12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the advertisement boundaries are provided out-of-band based off of wall-clock times.

13. The method of claim 10 , further comprising adding comments to the npvr manifests to denote first and last segments that contain the advertisement.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the program is a section of live streaming content corresponding to an npvr manifest.

Assignees

• Ericsson Ab

Inventors

• Ma Kevin J
• Hickey Robert
• Tweedale Paul
• Biagini Daniel
• Navali Prabhudev

Classifications

• H04N21/812

  involving advertisement data (advertising per se G06Q30/02) · CPC title

• H04N21/23109 Primary

  by placing content in organized collections, e.g. EPG data repository (details of retrieval of video data and associated meta data in video databases G06F16/739) · CPC title

• H04N21/2747

  Remote storage of video programmes received via the downstream path, e.g. from the server · CPC title

• H04N21/2187

  Live feed · CPC title

• H04N21/47217

  for controlling playback functions for recorded or on-demand content, e.g. using progress bars, mode or play-point indicators or bookmarks (specific graphical features in visual interfaces H04N21/4312) · CPC title