The present disclosure contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the present disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer systems and, particularly to computer systems for managing data stored on a variety of peripheral devices.
2. Related Art
With the proliferation of digital multimedia systems, it is not uncommon for both home personal computer (PC) users and professionals to access and manage thousands of multimedia files or collections of tens of compact disc-digital audio (CDDA) discs or other removable multimedia discs containing digitized audio or video tracks from a desktop computer or workstation. Existing operating system components and commercial software applications do not provide an effective method for individuals to organize and browse through their personal collection of multimedia discs and files. For example, a graphic artist may own a collection of 25 CD-ROM discs, containing digital photos and other image files. If each disc contains 2,000 files, the artist is faced with searching for a file in a collection of 50,000 files. There currently exists no convenient way to organize and manage a large collection of files spread across multiple removable discs in the user""s personal collection.
Existing software applications that attempt to address some of these problems are often known as content managers or xe2x80x9cmedia asset managers.xe2x80x9d These applications often address specific types of files rather than providing a more generalized tool for all multimedia files, tracks, and discs.
Some existing applications manage digital images, by providing a tool to catalog and produce thumbnails of each image file on a disc or the set of xe2x80x9cmountedxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9conlinexe2x80x9d volumes on a computer. These applications allow users to input keywords describing each image and a method for searching for images based on these keywords. The thumbnails and descriptive text are stored in a database. Some applications also allow the database to contain links to digital audio and video clips as well.
Other software applications exist that allow the user to build a database of their music CD collection. Each of these applications contain a database component to store the album title, artist, publisher, track list, and in some cases, music category, jacket cover, and artist and publisher""s web sites. In some cases, these applications connect to a database on the Internet whenever a new disc is mounted, that provides this information automatically so the user does not need to type it in manually. However, the inventors have not found an application that integrates the management of music CDs in conjunction with a changer to provide automatic inventory, loading, playlist construction, and multi-disc playback features described herein. The inventors have not found an application that can manage tens of music and video discs that can be played on a personal computer as well as standalone consumer electronics components such as CD music players or videodisc players. Furthermore, the inventors have not found an application that integrates the management of individual files on discs with the management of multiple CD-ROM titles such as music discs, CD-ROM games, or reference CDs. Lastly, the inventors have not found an application that is tightly-coupled with device drivers for CD-ROM changers, allowing a complete inventory of the discs in the changer, along with automatic insertion of titles, tracks, and directory and file names into respective databases contained within the application components.
Some software applications exist to manage CD-ROMs or other removable media in a jukebox device. These applications are typically designed for jukeboxes connected to a server, in which the media must be shared over a network. These applications have an inventory function that automatically mounts and reads the title information from each CD-ROM and creates a set of mount points or subdirectories under a common root directory to allow users on the network to mount specific titles or the entire set of discs to a locally-accessible mount point on the client workstation. These applications handle the automatic loading of a disc into an available drive in the jukebox whenever a user needs to access the specific disc. However, the inventors have not found an application that provides these general purpose jukebox functions along with a means for users to categorize, sort, and filter specific discs in a jukebox or changer based on criteria such as author, publisher, user-defined category. Neither have the inventors found an application that provides jukebox functions within an integrated application that allows the user to build, preview, and operate on collections of links or bookmarks to specific files or tracks spread across many of the discs within the jukebox.
The present invention addresses the needs of computer users and professionals that need to access and manage numerous multimedia files and/or collections of compact discs and other removable multimedia discs containing digitized audio or video tracks using a desktop computer or workstation.
The computer system of the present invention allows graphic artists, as well as professionals who use CD-ROMs containing reference data, such as medical records, legal proceedings or tax forms to manage their collections of CD-ROMs more efficiently and effectively.
The computer system of the present invention further allows the content of a user""s collection of fixed and removable media to be managed without regard to a specific type of media. The computer system performs equally well with files on floppy discs, removable hard-disks such as Iomega Zip, CDDA discs, CD-ROM discs, DVD-ROM discs and recordable or re-writeable variants of CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. The computer system of the present invention includes a computer program that allows a user to: insert his/her own collection of discs into a changer device and automatically inventory the changer to create a database or xe2x80x9ccachexe2x80x9d of the titles, directories and file names on all discs in the changer, describe and categorize both audio and CD-ROM discs, sort the discs based on different criteria, load a specific disc into the changer""s drive to access files or play audio or video tracks, display the multimedia files on the changer either textually or graphically, create playlists and collections of specific files or tracks as a reference for locating them later or incorporating them into presentations, view certain multimedia discs such as CD-Extra discs as both a set of audio tracks and a directory tree of files, maintain information associated with CDs in a database after the CDs are removed from the disc changer device, and allow the user to browse through his/her CD collection even after the discs have been removed from the disc changer device.
The computer program allows users to catalog, organize, and browse through their collections of discs, multimedia files and tracks in unique ways. The computer program includes device drivers and interfaces to peripherals known as xe2x80x9cchangersxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cjukeboxesxe2x80x9d that contain multiple removable discs and allow automatic loading of discs into a drive in the disc changer device upon either user-initiated or program-initiated commands. The computer program further supports xe2x80x9ccarouselxe2x80x9d disc changer devices that allow the user to insert several discs at once into the disc changer device when the device""s door is open. The computer program detects differences in the disc changer device""s inventory when the door is closed and allows the user to automatically inventory all newly detected discs. The computer program also detects which slots in the disc changer device are empty and removes the slot entries and directory trees for respective CD-ROMs from the program""s cache, but maintains certain information about the CD in a persistent database. The computer program includes a database component that persistently reflects the user""s collection of removable media even when the removable discs are not mounted or installed on a peripheral device of the computer system. Information about each disc that is stored persistently includes the disc""s title, author, publisher, and category, and, in the case of audio CDs, the CD""s track list, including track names and times, and jacket cover image.
The computer program allows the user to create both playlists and collections of specific multimedia files or tracks the user is interested in or is working with. The ordering of files or tracks in the playlists can be changed to suit the user""s desired order when performing playback of the data using either a built-in player described in the architecture, or an external player or presentation tool that is aware of the format of the playlist or collection. The operations of cataloging, organizing, browsing and creating collections are all contained in a single integrated application framework designed to enhance the user""s ability to find information within a potentially massive collection of multimedia content.
Furthermore, the computer system of the present invention allows links or bookmarks within collections to be displayed and browsed visually as thumbnails and used to automatically load discs containing files referred to by respective links whenever the files associated with these links need to be accessed.