A system for managing advertisements in a digital video environment, including methods for selecting suitable advertising based on subscriber profiles, and substituting advertisements in a program stream. The Ad management System (100) of the present invention manages the sales and insertion of digital video ads in cable tv, switched digital video and streaming internet based environments.

Advertising management system for digital video streams

An advertisement storage and filtering system for selectively identifying targeted advertisements to be stored in the memory of the STB. This storing of the selected advertisements can be accomplished in a number of ways. In one embodiment, the advertisements, in real-time and as they are received at the STB, are processed by the STB and only those advertisements with the appropriate characteristics are stored on the hard drive (HD). This may require some buffering of the advertisements in the STB memory as the STB processes and determines whether or not to store the advertisement. The information required to determine whether or not to store the advertisement could also be sent in advance, e.g., as a data service in an advertisement channel. Alternatively, the STB may store incoming advertisements in a memory temporarily and subsequently determine whether or not to retain the stored advertisements.

Advertisement filtering and storage for targeted advertisement systems

A method and apparatus for the insertion and transport of advertisements in a digital environment, including methods for directing advertisements (ads) at subscribers and substituting advertisements in a program stream with targeted advertisements. The insertion methods are based on synchronous, plesiochronous, or asynchronous techniques. These methods may operate at constant bit rates or at available bit rates. An ad manager is used to select targeted advertisements, and dynamic ad linking is used to substitute an advertisement in a program stream with an alternative targeted advertisement.

Advertisement insertion techniques for digital video streams

A system and method for scheduling advertisements in a television service network environment. An ad scheduler prepares an ad insertion schedule based on channel change statistical information and avail time information. The scheduler evaluates the statistical information, time durations between adjacent avails in a presentation stream, and the relatedness of market segments assigned to a plurality of advertisements. It schedules the ads into presentation stream groups based on this evaluation. The statistical ad scheduling allows the system to eliminate “forced” switching between multiple presentation streams, whereby system wears and malfunctions can be decreased.

System and method for delivering statistically scheduled advertisements

A control strategy is provided for dynamically encoding multiple streams of video data in parallel for multiplexing onto a constant bit rate channel. The control strategy is a single pass strategy which allows individual encode bit rates to be dynamically adjusted for each video data stream based on part in relative complexity of the multiple streams of video data, as well as fullness of compressed video data buffers and a channel buffer coupled between the encoders and the constant bit rate channel. The control strategy includes encoding the multiple streams of video frames in parallel, and dynamically adapting encoding of at least one stream of the video frames based on relative complexity of the video frames. The bit rate for each stream of video frames is only changed at GOP boundaries, or if a scene change occurs. The calculated bit rate is preferably further modified based upon buffer fullness.

Distributed control strategy for dynamically encoding multiple streams of video data in parallel for multiplexing onto a constant bit rate channel

When two or more different video streams a e compressed for concurrent transmission of multiple compressed video bitstreams over a single shared communication channel, control over both (1) the transmission of data over the shared channel and (2) the compression processing that generates the bitstreams is exercised taking into account the differing levels of latency required for the corresponding video applications. For example, interactive video games typically require lower latency than other video applications such as video streaming, web browsing, and electronic mail. A multiplexer and traffic controller takes these differing latency requirements, along with bandwidth and image fidelity requirements, into account when controlling both traffic flow and compression processing. In addition, an off-line profiling tool analyzes typical video applications off-line in order to generate profiles of different types of video applications that are then accessed in real-time by a call admission manager responsible to controlling the admission of new video application sessions as well as the assignment of admitted applications to specific available video encoders, which themselves may differ in video compression processing power as well as in the degree to which they allow external processors (like the multiplexer and traffic controller) to control their internal compression processing.

Latency-based statistical multiplexing

A PC-type computer has a system bus (e.g., a PCI bus) configured with a main CPU board, a statistical multiplexing (stat-mux) board, and a plurality of video/audio encoder boards, each configured to receive and compress a corresponding video/audio stream. The stat-mux board performs statistical multiplexing on the different compressed bitstreams to transmit multiple bitstreams over individual shared communication channels. Although each of the boards is configured to the system bus, each encoder board has a digital signal processor (DSP) with a synchronized serial interface (SSI) output port that is directly connected to an SSI input port on a DSP on the stat-mux board (which, in one embodiment, has four such DSPs each with six such SSI input ports). As such, (up to 24) compressed video/audio bitstreams generated on the various encoder boards can be transmitted directly to the stat-mux board without having to go through the system bus. In this way, the computer system can provide statistical multiplexing of low-latency video/audio bitstreams without having to suffer the processing delays associated with conventional transmission over PCI system buses.

Computer system for statistical multiplexing of bitstreams

In this paper, a hierarchical motion estimation algorithm using a binary pyramid (HMEBP) with 3-scale tilings is proposed. In the HMEBP scheme, motion estimation is performed using three block sizes in the real domain at the topmost layer. At the intermediate layers, each candidate motion vector is refined in the binary domain at three different scales and the best motion vector from each scale is propagated to the next layer for further refinement. At the lowest layer, one motion vector is selected for refinement for each macroblock based on minimizing the motion-compensated predicted error. The proposed techniques reduces computational complexity greatly compared with the full search because motion estimation in the binary domain only involves Boolean logic operations. This results in a substantial reduction in hardware complexity. Simulations on three MPEG sequences show the performance of the HMEBP is comparable with the full search.© (1998) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Hierarchical motion estimation using binary pyramid with three-scale tilings

Lorsqu'au moins deux flux video differents sont comprimes pour une transmission concurrente de multiples flux binaires video comprimes via une meme voie de communications, la commande 1) de la transmission des donnees via la meme voie et 2) le traitement de compression produisant les flux binaires, s'effectue en tenant compte des differents niveaux d'attente requis pour les applications video correspondantes. Les jeux video interactifs, par exemple, necessitent generalement un temps d'attente moins important que d'autres applications video, telles que la diffusion en temps reel, la navigation sur Internet et le courrier electronique. L'invention concerne ainsi un multiplexeur et un regulateur de trafic qui, lorsqu'ils commandent le flux de trafic et le traitement de compression, prennent en compte ces contraintes de temps d'attente differents, ainsi que la largeur de bande et les contraintes de fidelite de l'image. Un outil d'elaboration de profils en differe analyse les applications video en differe classiques, de facon a generer des profils de differents types d'applications video, auxquels un gestionnaire d'admissions d'appels accede ensuite en temps reel. Ce gestionnaire est responsable de la surveillance de l'admission de nouvelles sessions d'applications video ainsi que de l'affectation des applications admises, a des codeurs video specifiques disponibles qui, entre eux, divergent quant a leur capacite de traitement de compression video et quant au degre auquel ils laissent des processeurs externes (tels que le multiplexeur et le regulateur de trafic) commander leur traitement de compression interne.

Tihao Chiang

Papers

Latency-based statistical multiplexing

Computer system for statistical multiplexing of bitstreams

Hierarchical motion estimation using binary pyramid with three-scale tilings

Multiplexage statistique sur la base du temps d'attente