System and method for audio hot spotting
Audio hot spotting is accomplished by specifying query criterion to include a non-lexical audio cue. The non-lexical audio cue can be, e.g., speech rate, laughter, applause, vocal effort, speaker change or any combination thereof. The query criterion is retrieved from an audio portion of a file. A segment of the file containing the query criterion can be provided to a user. The duration of the provided segment can be specified by the user along with the files to be searched. A list of detections of the query criterion within the file can also be provided to the user. Searches can be refined by the query criterion additionally including a lexical audio-cue. A keyword index of topic terms contained in the file can also be provided to the user.
1. A method of searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
specifying one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds;
searching an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes; and
retrieving at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes.
2. A method of searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
specifying a query criterion that comprises one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds;
querying an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes; and
retrieving at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the classes include one of speech rate, laughter, applause, vocal effort, and speaker change.
4. The method of claim 2 , wherein the specifying step further comprises specifying a duration of a retrieved segment.
5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising providing, to a user, a list of detections of the query criterion within the file.
6. The method of claim 2 , wherein the specifying step comprises specifying a query criterion comprising a lexical audio feature.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the specifying step further comprises specifying a lexical audio feature comprising one of a user-specified phoneme string, a user-specified keyword, and a user-specified keyphrase.
8. The method of claim 6 , further comprising combining the classes and the lexical audio feature using Boolean operators.
9. The method of claim 2 , wherein the querying step comprises querying the audio track of the file to detect a phonetically expanded lexical audio feature.
10. The method of claim 2 , wherein the querying step comprises querying an audio track of the file to detect a semantically expanded lexical audio feature.
11. The method of claim 2 , wherein the querying step comprises querying an audio track of the file to detect a morphologically expanded lexical audio feature.
12. The method of claim 2 , wherein the querying step comprises querying an audio track of the file to detect a translingually expanded lexical audio feature.
13. The method of claim 2 , wherein the multimedia file is an audio file.
14. The method of claim 2 , wherein the multimedia file is a video file.
15. The method of claim 2 , wherein the multimedia file is any of WAV, AVI, MPEG, MPA, MP3 and MP4 file.
16. The method of claim 2 , further comprising providing a user with a list of topic terms detected in the audio track of the file.
17. A system for searching for audio features within multimedia files, comprising:
a user interface for specifying a query criterion comprising one or more classes of audio sounds, each of the classes comprising acoustic characteristics of a range of sounds; and
an audio feature extractor that (i) queries an audio track of a multimedia file to detect occurrences of the classes (ii) retrieves at least a segment of the searched multimedia file, if the segment contains at least one occurrence of the classes.
18. The system of claim 17 , wherein the classes include one of speech rate, laughter, applause, vocal effort, and speaker change.
19. The system of claim 17 , wherein the query criterion further comprises a segment duration.
20. The system of claim 17 , wherein the audio feature extractor provides, to a user, a list of detections of the query criterion within the file.
21. The system of claim 17 , wherein the audio feature extractor further provides a cross-file detection of the query criterion.
22. The system of claim 17 , wherein the query criterion further comprises a lexical audio feature.
23. The system of claim 22 , wherein the lexical audio feature is one of a user-specified phoneme string, a user-specified keyword, and a user-specified keyphrase.
24. The system of claim 22 , wherein the query criterion further comprises a combination of the classes and the lexical audio feature using Boolean operators.
25. The system of claim 22 , wherein the lexical audio feature is phonetically expanded.
26. The system of claim 22 , wherein the lexical audio feature is semantically expanded.
27. The system of claim 22 , wherein the lexical audio feature is morphologically expanded.
28. The system of claim 22 , wherein the lexical audio feature is translingually expanded.
29. The system of claim 17 , wherein the multimedia file is an audio file.
30. The system of claim 17 , wherein the multimedia file is a video file.
31. The system of claim 17 , wherein the multimedia file is any of WAV, AVI, MPEG, MPA, MP3 and MP4 file.
32. The system of claim 17 , wherein the audio feature extractor further provides a user with a list of topic terms detected in the audio track of the file.