Importance

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Abstract

A system for recording and playing back multimedia events includes recording sources, a preprocessor, a delivery processor, and user control units. The recording sources each captures a continuous temporal record or track of the multimedia event and transmits the captured track to the source preprocessor where tracks are coded into digital blocks and digitized blocks of tracks received simultaneously are time stamped with the same relative time, and therefore synchronized in time. Tracks of the multimedia event are also compressed and preprocessed to generate other representations of the multimedia event, which further assist users in searching through the multimedia event. The delivery processor services users' requests for multimedia events and delivers events to requesting users according to users' interactive commands. The delivery processor also generates stacked representations of the tracks of the multimedia event, which representations provide visual cues to assist the user in conducting rapid and intelligent searches through the multimedia event. The user control unit receives requests and interactive commands from the user to be transmitted to the delivery processor and multimedia events from the delivery processor for presentation to the user. Our inventive method for recording and playing back multimedia events entails: capturing tracks of various aspects of a multimedia event; coding the tracks into digitized blocks; time stamping each block; and compressing and preprocessing each track as instructed in a source mapping table; transmitting tracks of the multimedia event to the user as requested; and adjusting the delivery of tracks based upon relative time information associated with a new position established after searching through a track of the multimedia event.

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First Claim