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US 7,454,444 B2Granted
Method and apparatus for synchronizing multiple versions of digital data
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsJonathan C. Kagle, Gilad Odinak
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and system for synchronizing multiple versions of multimedia objects is provided. Each multimedia object may be identified by a unique identifier. In addition, a history graph may be generated and maintained for each object, where the history graph includes nodes that store unique identifiers and whose vectors describe the relationship between the multimedia objects. Metadata may be used to describe the transformations of objects.
Claims17
A method for synchronizing multiple versions of an object, comprising:
- receiving a multimedia object;
- assigning the multimedia object a first unique identifier and history data if the multimedia object does not have an associated unique identifier and history data, the first unique identifier being associated with metadata describing at least one attribute of the multimedia object, and the history data includes a first node representing the first unique identifier;
- responsive to the multimedia object being modified,
- assigning the multimedia object a second unique identifier, the second unique identifier being associated with metadata describing at least the modification of the multimedia object, said modification representing a change that has been made to the data of the multimedia object, and
- updating the history data to include a second node representing the second unique identifier of the multimedia object and to associate the second node with the first node;
- storing the multimedia object and the updated history data.
3 more elements
A method of comparing multimedia objects comprising:
- receiving a first multimedia object;
- assigning the first multimedia object a unique identifier and history data including at least one node representing the unique identifier if the multimedia object is not associated with at least one unique identifier and history data;
- comparing the first multimedia object to at least one second multimedia object by ascertaining whether at least one unique identifier of the first multimedia object matches at least one unique identifier of the second multimedia object, or by determining whether the history data of the first multimedia object shares any nodes in common with history data of the second multimedia object, the unique identifiers of the first multimedia object and the second multimedia object each being associated with respective metadata describing at least a modification of each of the multimedia objects, said modification representing a change that has been made to the data of the multimedia objects;
- determining whether the first multimedia object is related to the at least one second multimedia object based on the results of said comparison;
- and
- either performing a predetermined action on the basis of whether the first and at least one second multimedia objects are determined to be related, or outputting the result of said determination to a user.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.