Thomas C Landauer, 8545 Reed St, Denver, CO 80226

5703655, Dec 30, 1997

Jun 19, 1996

8/665995

Douglas Arthur Corey - Boulder CO
Thomas K. Landauer - Boulder CO
Bud C. Wonsiewicz - Boulder CO

U S West Technologies, Inc. - Boulder CO

H04N 708
H04N 7087
H04N 710
H04N 964

348468

The present invention is a system and method for retrieving segments of stored video programs using closed caption text data. The closed caption text data is extracted from video programming signals received by the invention. Text records based on the extracted closed caption data are generated. Each text record is derived from the closed caption data for a single continuous video segment to which the text record serves as an index or key in retrieving this video segment. Preferably, each text record (a) has sufficient content to adequately describe the content of the video segment to which it serves as an index; and (b) corresponds to a video segment focused on a small number of topics. To accomplish (a) and (b) the present invention generates each text record so that it has a predetermined maximum length and so that it is derived from the closed caption data for a single uninterrupted speaker. During video data retrieval, video requests or queries input by users are evaluated either by comparing query terms with terms in the text records, or by comparing an interpretation of query terms with an interpretation of terms in the text records.

5987446, Nov 16, 1999

Nov 12, 1996

8/747298

Douglas A. Corey - Boulder CO
Thomas K. Landauer - Boulder CO
Karen E. Lochbaum - Boulder CO

U.S. West, Inc. - Denver CO
MediaOne Group, Inc. - Englewood CO

G06F 1730

707 3

An information retrieval system is disclosed, wherein the system includes a plurality of text search engines based on substantially different computational searching techniques. By activating each search engine with input from a user information request, the output from each of the search engines is combined into a single list of information items. A ranking process ranks the information items in the combined list by utilizing information item ordering data also received from each of the search engines as to the relevance of the information items output by the search engine to the user's request. Thus, by providing higher rankings to those information items determined to be most relevant to the user's request by each of (or a majority of) the search engines, these information items have been found to be highly consistent in satisfying the user's request for information.