Character-based automated text summarization
OwnerFrank Elmo Weberinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods, devices, systems and tools are presented that allow the summarization of text, audio, and audiovisual presentations, such as movies, into less lengthy forms. High-content media files are shortened in a manner that preserves important details, by splitting the files into segments, rating the segments, and reassembling preferred segments into a final abridged piece. Summarization of media can be customized by user selection of criteria, and opens new possibilities for delivering entertainment, news, and information in the form of dense, information-rich content that can be viewed by means of broadcast or cable distribution, “on-demand” distribution, internet and cell phone digital video streaming, or can be downloaded onto an iPod™ and other portable video playback devices.
Claims14
A method for summarizing a text document, comprising:
- a) providing a text document having a first temporal length, the text document comprising:
- i) a plurality of sentence segments, each sentence segment comprising at least one segment component;
- ii) a plurality of secondary segments comprising at least one non-dialogue segment;
- b) rating each sentence segment by automatically determining a significance value for each sentence segment, the method comprising:
- determining at least two word significance values for at least one characteristic of at least one segment component including determining whether the segment component is a noun, pronoun, reference to a story character, a frequency of occurrence of the segment component, a match of the segment component to a predetermined database word;
- and combining the at least two word significance values;
- c) determining a secondary significance value of one or more of the secondary segments wherein the secondary significance value weights the significance value of the sentence segment;
- d) receiving a user generated time significance value threshold;
- e) using the significance value threshold to select the sentence segment if the weighted significance value of the sentence segment exceeds the significance value threshold, and delete the sentence segment if the significance value of the sentence segment is below the significance value threshold;
- f) combining each sentence segment with the weighted sentence segment significance value exceeding the significance value threshold into a summarized version of the text document;
- and
- g) providing the summarized version of the text document, the text document having a second temporal length.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.