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METHOD FOR MULTI-MEDIA
RECOGNITION, DATA CONVERSION,
CREATION OF METATAGS, STORAGE AND
SEARCH RETRIEVAL
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CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED
APPLICATIONS
This application is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/325,373, filed Jan. 4,2006, now U.S. Pat. No. 10 7,184,573 entitled APPARATUS FOR CAPTURING INFORMATION AS A FILE AND ENHANCING THE FILE WITH EMBEDDED INFORMATION, which is a continuation of Ser. No. 10/674,910 filed Sep. 29, 2003 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,996,251, issued Feb. 7, 2006, entitled FORENSIC 15 COMMUNICATION APPARATUS AND METHOD, which claims the benefit of expired U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/414,449, filed Sep. 30, 2002, entitled FORENSIC COMMUNICATION APPARATUS AND METHOD, the specification of which is incorporated in its entirety herein by 20 reference. This application also claims the benefit of priority from Provisional Patent Application No. 60/757,075, filed on Jan. 6, 2006.
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION 25
This invention relates to the storage and search retrieval of all types of digital media files, whether music or other audio, still photographs, videos, movies or other types of media.
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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The popularity of digital media devices such as digital cameras, video cameras, mobile phones with audio and video recording capability and portable music devices that have 35 recording capability has exploded in recent years. Instead of recording pictures, video and sound on physical media, modern devices record to rewritable memory devices. This means that the cost to create a new image, movie or audio recording has fallen to near zero, making the number of these recordings 40 available in any given individual's library skyrocket.
But this new ability to store virtually unlimited numbers of media files introduces new problems. First, the sheer number makes it nearly impossible to manually describe and index every media file in one's possession. This means that, for 45 many, photographs, movies and audio recordings are kept in poorly organized computer files and finding any particular picture, movie or recording is a difficult and time-consuming process.
The second problem is the fact that people typically trade 50 up to a new computer every three years or so. This means that hours of video, thousands of pictures or hundreds of audio files must be transferred from the old system to the new—a sometimes daunting task.
A third problem is one can typically access locally stored 55 media files only on the computer on which they reside. If one wishes to share the file with another one must typically employ some file-transfer method ahead of time (email, FTP, public server, etc.)
A fourth problem relates to e-mailing or sending your 60 media files to another party, whereas the receiving party is not able to search the media files for the specific key indexes that the original owner had intended. While there are programs to allow the originator to type in key index words (tags) for searching and retrieving these media files from their personal 65 computer, when these media files are e-mailed or sent to another party, these tags are removed from the media file,
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therefore the receiving party does not have an ability to search, sort, display, play or print these media files based on the original owners key indexes.
Finally, those who make a living providing content need some method for proving that a given work belongs to them, and that they are the original creator of the work.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention consists of three subsystems: a Capture Device 100 (for example, a digital camera, a video camera, an audio recorder, or a vehicle "black box" that receives and stores information from sensors and other visual, audio and electronic input devices located throughout the vehicle), a Storage Facility 128, and an Access Point 152 for the remote client. All of the subsystems communicate with one another by means of some communications infrastructure (such as the Internet, mobile telephone networks or the public switch telephone network.
In typical usage, the capture device will, when activated, capture a stream of data from its primary interface (for a digital camera, this would be an image sensor; for an audio recorder, a microphone). In addition, the capture device will record certain meta data (such as time, date, location and identity of the capture device) and optionally a stream of data from a secondary interface. For example, the secondary stream may include audio data for operators' comments, or a secondary video channel to assist in providing context for the information received from the primary interface.
This information is combined, compressed and encrypted. Then, the resulting data set (called the "composite element" in this document) is hashed, and the hash and the meta data are transmitted to the storage facility.
The storage facility uses the device ID in the meta data to determine the identity of the owner of the device, and prepares a certificate that identifies the owner. The certificate contains information that could only come from the storage facility, making the storage facility witness to the accuracy of the time stamp data in the meta data. Once created, the certificate is returned to the capture device.
The capture device now combines the certificate with the encrypted composite element and encrypts the result under the public key of the storage facility. An opponent that received this transmission packet would have to break both the asymmetrical encryption envelope and the inner symmetrical cryptosystem to reveal the actual data element.
The storage facility now decrypts the transmission packet and verifies the certificate. It decrypts the composite element and recovers the original captured data, the meta data and the secondary data. Using this information, it creates a set of "tags" and indexes the information for quick subsequent retrieval. All of this information is stored.
The third subsystem is an access point. A client wishing to retrieve information from the storage facility must first provide some type of authentication token. Generally, the token will consist of a username/password combination, a challenge/response pair, or a physical hardware device. Once authenticated, the client can request media files and update or remove tags. The client can also mark a media file public, and can request additional tokens to provide to others who may wish to access the media files.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
For a more complete understanding of the present invention and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings in which:
