Method and apparatus for creation, distribution, assembly and verification of media
A method and apparatus for creation, distribution, assembly and verification of media, including one embodiment, media is transmitted to a receiver where the receiver assembles the media into programming. In another embodiment, media is transmitted to the receiver from a plurality of sources. In a further embodiment, a source of media performs a tagging operation to associate sets of tags with elements of the stream of media. In various embodiments, different combinations of look-and-feel, content and other tags are associated with the media stream. In an additional embodiment, tagging of the media stream is performed at the receiver. A user at the receiver may also provide data about the user to the receiver. In yet another embodiment, the receiver uses the tags to assemble the media into a program. In still further embodiments of the invention, various Royalty Only Aggregate Revenues or “ROAR” models and apparatus are disclosed.
1. A method of media distribution comprising:
obtaining first media source data from a database of first media source data tagged to describe a plurality of qualities of the first media source, the first media source data being associated with a first channel;
obtaining second media source data from a database of second media source data tagged to describe a plurality of qualities of the second media source, the second media source data being associated with a second channel;
obtaining in real time from each active user viewer profile data for each active user;
automatically generating, without human intervention, in real time for each active user a uniquely-concatenated stream of media by automatically assembling first and second media files using the first media source data, the second media source data and the user viewer profile data for each active user, the uniquely-concatenated stream of media being unique to each active user such that each active user receives the uniquely-concatenated stream of media in a unique temporal order;
generating a unique channel dedicated to the uniquely-concatenated stream of media from the first channel and the second channel;
storing, in a cache memory, for each active user, the unique temporal order and channel-specific relationships of the uniquely-concatenated stream of media;
playing out, from the cache memory, to each active user, on the unique channel, the uniquely-concatenated stream of media associated with each active user;
and
caching the first media source data form a first stream, and redeploying the first media source data to a different stream at a different time than an original time of the first media source data.
2. The method of claim 1 , where additional data is retrieved from a database describing the qualities of the first and second media sources descriptive of a range of transition characteristics, where the qualities of the first and second media sources are operated to determine aesthetically acceptable transitions between the first and second media files in the uniquely-concatenated stream delivered to each active user, and where the qualities of the first and second media sources are determined in advance of the assembly of the first and second media files concatenated for each user without any human interaction.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generation of the uniquely-concatenated stream of media is based on a template, wherein the generation includes ordering, clip-selection and editing the uniquely-concatenated stream of media by reference to the template.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generation of the uniquely-concatenated stream of media is based without consulting a template, wherein the generation includes ordering, clip-selection and editing the uniquely-concatenated stream of media without reference to the template.
5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
inserting a compliant cue in the uniquely-concatenated stream of media.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the compliant cue contains a station identifier or a server identifier, and an identifier of a program in which the compliant cue is embedded.