Abstract: A video composition method selects segments from image source material stored on at least one storage medium and denotes serially connected sequences of the segments to thereby form a program sequence. The method employs pictorial labels associated with each segment for ease of manipulating the segments to form the program sequence. The labels are displayed on an ordered spatial array of display monitors. The composition control function is highly user interactive and responds to user commands for displaying, selectively, segments of the source material on a display monitor. The method identifies each segment by a pictorial image segment label and can assemble a plurality of labels into a label sequence. The method operates upon a sequentially related plurality of labels as a single label, the single label identifying a plurality of segments.

Abstract: A video composition apparatus and method select segments from image source material stored on at least one storage medium and denote serially connected sequences of the segments to thereby form a program sequence. The source material, as it is being stored on the storage medium, has associated with each frame an internal time code. For each storage medium, which in the illustrated embodiment is a video tape recorder, the internal time codes are written in sequential order so that the difference in time codes between two frames corresponds to the difference in time or distance between the two frames on the video tape. When a plurality of different tape recorders record the same frame, the same internal time code is associated with the frame on each video tape recorder.

Abstract: A video composition method and apparatus select segments from image source material stored on a plurality of storage media and denote serially connected sequences of the segments to thereby form a program sequence. The equipment inputs source material, records the source material on the storage media, and further segments the source material as it is being input. An analog-to-digital converter digitizes frames of the source material, as the source material is being input, and each segment has associated therewith at least one digitized frame. The apparatus further has a plurality of pictorial display monitors arranged in an ordered array for providing a visual presentation of video labels selected from the digitized frames, the video labels, in sequence, representing a sequence of the video segments.