Abstract: There is disclosed a multimedia processing method comprising: converting multimedia items into versions of multiple compression levels for storage within a media catalog; and estimating the likelihood of a user consuming each multimedia item based on a consumption history of items within said media catalog and said user; computing the multimedia items to be downloaded and a per-item compression level in dependence on resource constraints at a client device of said user and said estimated consumption likelihoods; downloading a compressed version of the multimedia items; and storing a record of consumed downloaded items.

Abstract: There is described a multimedia processing method comprising: identifying a start and end time ranges in an input multimedia stream; comparing said ranges to an alternate multimedia stream of the same program for regions of similarity; and defining time ranges as representing chapter regions responsive to the content of both streams within the time ranges having high similarities.

Abstract: There is disclosed a multimedia processing method comprising: converting multimedia items into versions of multiple compression levels for storage within a media catalog; and estimating the likelihood of a user consuming each multimedia item based on a consumption history of items within said media catalog and said user; computing the multimedia items to be downloaded and a per-item compression level in dependence on resource constraints at a client device of said user and said estimated consumption likelihoods; downloading a compressed version of the multimedia items; and storing a record of consumed downloaded items.

Abstract: There is described a multimedia processing method comprising: identifying a start and end time ranges in an input multimedia stream; comparing said ranges to an alternate multimedia stream of the same program for regions of similarity; and defining time ranges as representing chapter regions responsive to the content of both streams within the time ranges having high similarities.

Abstract: A method of retrieving documents using a search engine includes providing a reverse index including one or more keywords and a list of documents containing the one or more keywords, the reverse index further including a measure of confidence (MOC) value associated with the one or more keywords. One or more query terms are input into the search engine. The query terms are disambiguated and a MOC value is associated with each meaning of the disambiguated query term. A list of documents is retrieved containing the query terms wherein the documents are initially ranked based at least in part on the MOC values of the keywords and query terms. The list of documents may be re-ranked based at least in part on the semantic similarity of each document to the disambiguated query terms.