CROSS-REFERENCE

The present application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 62/480,548 filed on April 3, 2017, entitled Smooth Start Playback of Video.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to streaming media, and in particular to systems, devices and methods for presenting media contents such as long form media contents.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Increasingly, people use mobile devices to view media content rather than traditional TV screens. The trend for viewing media content on mobile devices impacts viewing experience. While viewing long form content such as News programs on TV is mainly passive, on mobile devices, viewers naturally have interactive behavior such as skipping on media items or segments of long form contents before one item has been completed to view another item or segment of special interest to the viewer. It is always a challenge for systems to support the transition to the new item smoothly from a viewer experience perspective. To facilitate displaying the next media segment, the system has to download the next media segment from the media server. In order to provide a good viewing experience, the system may preload a portion of the next media segment for caching, so that when viewer requests to skip to the next media segment, the media segment will be immediately ready for display. For example, US 2014/0368736 entitled "system and method for selecting media to be preloaded for adjacent channels" discloses a method in which after starting to download the first video stream, the device displays the first video stream and starts to preload one or more video streams including a second video stream. In response to receiving the second request, the device displays at least a portion of the second video stream using a preloaded portion of the second video stream. US 2014/0372888 entitled "System and method for determining whether to use cached media" determines whether a display request meets recency criteria, in which case the device starts to play the second video stream using the cached portion of the second video. US 2013/0132605 entitled "Systems and methods for internet video delivery", provides a method for delivering video content over the Internet. Videos are identified and pre-processed by a web service and then separated into a plurality of segments. Based on user interests, video segments may be pre -fetched and stored by a client associated with a user. Upon receiving a selection from a user to play a video, the first video segment may begin playing instantaneously from a local cache. US 2016/0007077 entitled "System and method for allocating bandwidth between media streams", provides a method wherein an electronic device, while displaying a first video stream on the display, allocates, in accordance with a historical pattern of video stream switching of a user, available bandwidth for receiving data at the device at least between receiving the first video stream and preloading a second, non-displayed video stream. US 2015/0365720 entitled "System and method for switching between media streams for non-adjacent channels while providing a seamless user experience", provides a method of transitioning from displaying a first video stream to displaying a second video stream. A portion of the first video stream is concurrently displayed with at least a portion of the preloaded video content of one or more intervening channels.

Known solutions for media segment transition based on different types of applications of video caching demand resources such as communication bandwidth and client device memory. Therefore, video caching is less practical for cases in which at any point of time, viewers may request to skip to any one of a plurality of related media segments. A viewer may request to view the next or previous item in the current long form media content, or to view a segment from a plurality of media segments which relate to the current viewed segment. For such cases, it may be impractical and expensive of bandwidth and client memory to cache videos of multiple media segments in client memory.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An object of the invention is to define a simple and inexpensive solution from a resource perspective that provides a good user experience for the cases of flexibility of skipping user requests between media segments.

This object is achieved in accordance with an embodiment of the invention by a method for transitioning between video segments when streaming on-demand video according to claim 1. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A better understanding of the features and advantages of the present disclosure will be obtained by reference to the following detailed description that sets forth illustrative embodiments, in which the principles of embodiments of the present disclosure are utilized, and the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a client server system for navigating between media segments supporting smooth transition between segments;

FIG. 2 shows a flowchart of method of navigation between media segments, in accordance with embodiments; and

FIG. 3 illustrates a flowchart of method of updating client with its collection of first digital images in accordance with embodiments.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Overview

Embodiments of the present invention that are described hereinbelow address the viewing experience issue, when a viewer requests to skip quickly between different media items. In the context of the present description and in the claims, the term "first digital image" refers to a digital format such as JPEG of first picture or frame of any media segment or item. The term "collection of first digital images" refers to a collection of first digital images of certain media items. The client collection of first digital images is cached in device client memory. Each client may handle its own collection of first digital images.

The client media player preloads from a server to which it is connected a collection of first digital images. Upon receiving a viewer request to skip to another media segment, the client media player selects and displays the first digital image of the requested media segment from the collection of first digital images. In parallel, the client media player downloads from the server the requested media segment to play. As soon as a portion of the downloaded media segment is ready to play, the media player replaces the display of the first digital image with the downloaded media item. Play of the downloaded media item starts exactly at the timing point, typically corresponding to the display time code, of the first digital image. The transition between display mode to play mode is done exactly at the same point, appearing continuous and uninterrupted to the user. In another embodiment, the preloaded collection of first digital images contains a plurality of collections of first digital images at different resolution qualities. The client media player automatically selects the resolution quality of the first digital image for display, according to certain criteria, for example the expected resolution quality of the downloaded media item, such that the transition between the display of the first digital image and the play of media segment will be smooth.

In another embodiment, the server updates the collection of first digital images in the client media player with new images. The client collection of the first digital images is determined at any time, for example, according the current client viewing position and the client skip requests history.

In another embodiment, to support the general case of the viewer skipping to any segment of any video, the server updates the collection of first digital images, each displaying a respective initial frame of a plurality of segments, each segment belonging to one or more of a plurality of long form contents. The viewer may skip forward or backward to any segment, or may skip to a media segment from a plurality of related media segments. A related media segment is a media segment, which has semantic similarity based on the likeness of meanings or semantic content, with the currently viewed media segment. For example, a viewer was very impressed with a goal of a famous player and would like to view another goal of the same player.

In some embodiments, the collection of first digital images is determined based on a client's "skip to segment" request history. For example, if a client usually requests to skip forward or backward, the collection of first digital images will mostly include first digital images of forward or backward segments as appropriate. If the client usually requests for a certain type of related segments, the first digital images collection will include mostly first digital images of the particular type of related segments. To this end, the collection of first digital still images is dynamically updated in real time according to the user's surfing behavior. Likewise, when a user commences a new session, an initial collection of first digital still images may be pre -fetched according to the user's behavior in a previous session and will then be dynamically updated according to actual behavior during the current session. In another embodiment with LIVE programs, the server will constantly update the client collection of first digital images of a new media segment of particular media content, whenever a new media segment of the LIVE program is ready.

FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a system 10, such as a client server system, for providing smooth transition while a viewer requests to skip to another media segment. The system 10 includes a media server 11 comprising one or more processors such as CPU (Central Processing Unit) 15 coupled to one or more storage units, such as storage units 21, 22 and memory unit 23. The CPU 15 is configured to operate a first digital image management module 20 that is configured to support client devices with client caching of collection of first digital images. The first digital image management module 20, defines for each client device, a respective optimized collection of first digital images that should be cached in the client device memory.

The storage unit 21 stores media content or a URL to content stored for example in another network server. The media content storage unit may contain different resolution types of the same content to support cases of different available network bandwidths as well as different client device type capabilities. In some cases, one of the storage units, such as memory unit 22 may comprise information relating to media segments of the media contents stored in storage unit 21. Specifically, the stored information includes for example the media segment boundaries, each defining the end of one segment and the start of the next and being defined by timing information, typically at the beginning and end of the segment. The memory unit 22 may contain links from any media segment to a plurality of its related media segments.

In some cases, the memory unit 23 may store a client's 'skip to segment' history requests. For example, the clients 'skip to segment' request history may determine the particular client collection of first digital images.

The system 10 further comprises one or more client devices 31 and 41 which may be in communication with the CPU 15 via a network 25, typically the Internet. The devices 31 and 41 may comprise, for example, desktop, laptop, or tablet computers, media consoles, personal digital assistants or smart phones, or any other sort of device with the types of network, media and audio interfaces and computing capabilities needed to interact with the server 11. By way of example, device 31 may be a computer with a processor 32, memory 33, display 34, a user interface configured to receive a navigation command from a user, a communication module configured to communicate with the server 11 and other units such as speakers. Device 41 may be similarly equipped, though in different configurations. For example, device 41 may be a mobile phone comprising a processor 42, display 44 and memory 43. The memories 33 and 43 may each store a collection of first digital images. The processors 32 and 42 may select for display the appropriate first digital image from the stored collection of first digital images, until the corresponding media segment is ready to play.

The processors 32 and 42 comprise a media player software module which is configured to download media content, for example from the server network 25. The devices 31 and 41 are further provided with respective user interfaces 37 and 47 which are configured to receive and recognize the viewer's navigation commands. For example, the user interfaces 47 and 37 may include a touchscreen or gesture recognition sensor configured to identify one or more skip navigation commands for example skip to the next content segment or skip to a related segment. The navigation commands may include for example one or more swipes across the touchscreen. Alternatively, the navigation commands may be one or more gestures or postures. The gestures can originate from any bodily motion such as the face or hand.

The swipe or gesture commands may be transmitted via the network 25 to the server 11, and accordingly the server 11 returns the next media segment to be played or a URL for the next segment. Alternatively, of course, a different server storing the required media content may convey the media content to the client under the direction of the server 11.

Fig. 2 shows a flowchart 200 of a method of navigation between media segments, in accordance with some embodiments. At operation 201, a user viewing a media segment requests to skip to another media segment. The request to skip media segment can be for example a request to skip forward. In another case the user may request to skip to any of related segment from a plurality of related segments. In another case, the user issues a skip request while for example client device processor 32 has not finished handling previous client skipping requests, such that while issuing the last skipping request, the device processor 32 is busy with preparing a previous next media segment to play. On operation 203, the processor 32 checks whether the requested media segment is cached in memory and ready to play. If the requested media segment is ready to play, on operation 205, the client device sets the media background layout for media display and plays the media segment. If the requested media segment is not ready, the client device will display the first digital image of the requested media segment. To select the appropriate first digital image for display, on operation 209, the processor 32 determines the expected video resolution of the requested media segment. The expected video resolution is determined for example by the current available network bandwidth, the video display resolution of previous media segments or the resolution of the current download of the requested media segment, in case segment download has already been started. On operation 211, based on the expected video display resolution, the processor 32 selects the appropriate first digital image of the requested media segment. On operation 213, the processor 32 sets the graphic display background layout and displays the selected first digital image. On operation 215, the processor 32 downloads the requested media segment from the server. As part of the fulfilling the download request, the server CPU 15 updates the client 'skip to segment' requests information, on the client's 'skip to segment' history memory 23. In addition, the server CPU 15 updates the 'video display resolution' information of the last media segment, on the client's 'video display resolution' history memory 17. On operation 203, the processor 32, checks whether downloaded media segment is ready to play. As soon as the media segment is ready to play, the processor 32 replaces the setting of the graphic display background layout definition for the first image display, with the video foreground layout to display the played media segment.

Fig. 3 shows a flowchart of method 300 of updating a client with its collection of first digital images, in accordance with some embodiments. At operation 301, the client requests the server to build a list of first images for its collection of first digital images. In one embodiment, the client may request from the server an update for its collection, in case the current played media segment is changed. In another embodiment, the client may request from the server an update for its collection, in case the user makes multiple skip requests in a time period that is shorter than a specified threshold. This may happen when a user is searching for a specific item and swipes forward or backward in quick succession until the desired item appears. In another embodiment, the client may request from the server an update for its collection, in case the available network bandwidth changes by more than a specified threshold. At operation 303, the server CPU 15, builds a profile of the client skip requests according to its client skip requests history. The profile of the client skip requests can for example indicate the probability that client skip request will be to skip forward, skip backward or skip to a related segment. In another case, when a client requests to skip to a related segment, based on the client skip requests history, the profile indicates the probability to which type of related segment the user will request to skip. At operation 305, based on the currently played media segment in the client device and the profile of the client skip requests, the first digital image management module 20 generates the list of first digital images for the client collection of first digital images. In one embodiment the list of first digital images is determined by the available client resources, for example available storage space of the client device. At operation 309, the client device downloads the list of first digital images from the server. For each item in the list, the processor 32 checks for whether it is cached in the collection of the first digital images. For those first digital images that are not cached, at operation 311 the client requests from the server to download the first digital image for caching. To fulfil the client download request, the CPU 15 reads the first digital image of the particular media segment from the media content storage 21 and converts the digital video format such as MP4 to a still picture digital image type of format such as JPEG. The client downloads from server JPEG of first digital image for caching.

It should be noted that the appended method claims define various operations that must be executed by a client or server, the order of carrying out the operations is not itself a feature of the claims unless specifically stated otherwise.

It will be also understood that the system according to the invention may be a suitably programmed computer. Within the context of the invention and the appended claims, it is to be understood that while the invention is most typically executed using a smartphone, it can be executed using any computer having suitable user and telecommunications interfaces. Therefore, the term "computer" as used in the claims is to be understood in this context and is not limited to a dedicated computer. Likewise, the invention contemplates a computer program being readable by a computer as just defined for executing the method of the invention. The invention further contemplates a machine-readable memory tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine for executing the method of the invention. In should also be noted that features that are described with reference to one or more embodiments are described by way of example rather than by way of limitation to those embodiments. Thus, unless stated otherwise or unless particular combinations are clearly inadmissible, optional features that are described with reference to only some embodiments are assumed to be likewise applicable to all other embodiments also.