Capture of stylized tv table data via ocr

A method of detecting text in a television video display table, comprising:

• saving a frame of video representing an image to a memory device;
• determining that the frame of video contains a table having cells containing text by detecting rectangular shapes of size adequate to contain legible text;
• storing a working copy of the frame of video to a memory;
• isolating text in the table by:
• removing any table boundaries from the image;
• removing any cell boundaries from the image by matching a display to a template in order to locate the boundaries;
• determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes in the table boundaries or cell boundaries;
• and
• removing any three dimensional or shadow attributes identified, thereby producing text isolated against a contrasting color background;
• and
• where determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes in the table boundaries or cell boundaries is carried out by finding line patterns adjacent and outside table or cell boundaries that track a table or cell boundary;
• and
• processing the isolated text using an optical character recognition (OCR) engine to extract the text as data to a metadata database.

A method of detecting text in a television video display table, comprising:

• saving a frame of video representing a television electronic program guide to a memory device;
• where the electronic program guide comprises a table having cells containing text;
• detecting rectangular shapes of size adequate to contain legible text to identify the table cells by identifying lines or color changes that are arranged in a vertical and horizontal pattern;
• storing a working copy of the frame of video to a memory;
• isolating text in the table by:
• removing any table boundaries from the image;
• removing any cell boundaries from the image by matching a display to a template in order to locate the boundaries;
• determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes in the table boundaries or cell boundaries;
• removing any three dimensional or shadow attributes identified, thereby producing text isolated against a contrasting color background;
• where determining if the image has three dimensional or shadow attributes in the table boundaries or cell boundaries is carried out by finding line patterns adjacent and outside table or cell boundaries that track a table or cell boundary;
• and
• converting the text isolated against a contrasting color background to black text on a white background;
• and
• processing the isolated text using an optical character recognition (OCR) engine to extract the text as data to a metadata database.