Equipment and method for detecting commercial automately

An apparatus for automatically detecting television advertisements comprising:

• a video frame buffer for storing a first group of video frames and a second group of video frames received by a television in which a scene change rate of said second group of video frames is substantially different from that of said first group of video frames;
• a video scene change detection and calculation unit for reading said first and second groups of video frames stored in said video frame buffer, determining the last frame immediately before said first group of video frames changes into said second group of video frames as a prompting frame, and calculating a correlation between a newly received video frame and said prompting frame;
• a prompting signal generation unit for generating a prompting signal when said correlation between said newly received video frame and said prompting frame, which is detected by said video scene change detection and calculation unit, is equal to or larger than a predetermined threshold;
• and
• a control unit for controlling the operations of said video scene change detection and calculation unit.

An apparatus for automatically detecting television advertisements comprising:

• a video frame buffer for storing a first group of video frames and a second group of video frames received by a television in which a scene change rate of said second group of video frames is substantially different from that of said first group of video frames;
• a video scene change detection and calculation unit for reading said first and second groups of video frames stored in the video frame buffer, determining the last frame immediately before said first group of video frames changes into said second group of video frames as a prompting frame, and calculating a correlation between a newly received video frame and said prompting frame;
• a prompting signal generation unit for generating a prompting signal when the correlation between said newly received video frame and said prompting frame, which is detected by said video scene change detection and calculation unit, is equal to or larger than a predetermined threshold;
• and
• a control unit for controlling said prompting signal generation unit to generate said prompting signal in accordance with the changing from said second group of video frames to said first group of video frames detected by said video scene change detection and calculation unit.

A method for automatically detecting television advertisements comprising the steps of:

• storing a first group of video frames and a second group of video frames received by a television in which a scene change rate of the second group of video frames is substantially different from that of said first group of video frames;
• when an instruction to prompt an end of the advertisements is received, reading the stored first and second groups of video frames, and detecting when said second group of video frames is changed into said first group of video frames;
• and
• generating a prompting signal when said second group of video frames is changed into said first group of video frames.

An apparatus for automatically detecting television advertisements comprising:

• a video frame buffer for storing a first group of video frames and a second group of video frames received by a television in which a scene change rate of said second group of video frames is substantially different from that of said first group of video frames;
• a video scene change detection and calculation unit for reading said first and second groups of video frames stored in said video frame buffer, determining the last frame immediately before said first group of video frames changes into said second group of video frames as a prompting frame;
• a prompting signal generation unit for generating a prompting signal when a newly received video frame matches said prompting frame;
• and
• a control unit for controlling the operations of said video scene change detection and calculation unit.

An apparatus for automatically detecting television advertisements comprising:

• a video frame buffer for storing a first group of video frames and a second group of video frames received by a television in which a scene change rate of said second group of video frames is substantially different from that of said first group of video frames;
• a video scene change detection and calculation unit for reading said first and second groups of video frames stored in said video frame buffer, determining a video frame contained in said first groups of video frames, which is located at a predetermined time point before said first group of video frames changes into said second group of video frames, as a prompting frame;
• a prompting signal generation unit for generating a prompting signal when a newly received video frame matches said prompting frame;
• and
• a control unit for controlling the operations of said video scene change detection and calculation unit.