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This Patent Application has received a non-final rejection by the US Patent Office! An initial rejection is part of the typical course of a patent application.


AN OVERBROAD PATENT ON cloud-based video editing - This application seeks to patent the idea of...sending large video files to a server and providing cloud-based applications to edit video files! 10 minutes of your time can help narrow US patent applications before they become patents. Follow @askpatents on twitter to help.

QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before 5/23/2011 that discusses:

  • Video-editing software as a service run on a cloud-based server

If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question. We welcome multiple answers from the same individual.

EXTRA CREDIT - A reference to anything that meets all of the criteria to the question above AND ALSO involves segmenting large files into smaller segments so that encoding and delivery can be managed in segments

TITLE: Databases and web applications for large video files

Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] A method for editing and managing large video files by uploading the files to a server and doing editing through web applications

  • Publication Number: US 20130132523 A1
  • Application Number: US 13/478,772
  • Assignee:
  • Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating 5/23/2011
  • Open for Challenge at USPTO: Open through 11/19/2013

Claim 1 requires each and every step below:

A method for the acquisition and management of digital files and their display and management through the internet, comprising:

  1. communicating with a plurality of electronic storage devices via the internet;

  2. copying files from said electronic storage devices;

  3. storing said files and facilitating the download of said files; and

  4. providing tools for the management of said files, said tools comprising a tool for delivering only a portion of one of said files.

In English this means:

A method for managing and displaying video files on the internet

  1. Communicating with more than one storage device (e.g. a laptop or a smartphone)

  2. Copying files from the storage device

  3. Storing files on server(s) on the internet

  4. Providing tools to manage the files, including tools to download only a portion of one of the files

Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to 5/23/2011

You're probably aware of ten pieces of art that meet this criteria already... separately, the applicant is claiming breaking large files into segments to help with uploading, encoding, and editing


"Acquiring, managing and uploading video files from the Applicant"


What is good prior art? Please see our FAQ.

Want to help? Please vote or comment on submissions below. We welcome you to post your own request for prior art on other questionable US Patent Applications.


5 Answers 5

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HTTP/1.1 as described in RFC 2616, published June 1999, satisfies all of the steps in the quoted claim.

The POST command allows a client (often a laptop) to send (copy) a file to the server. Depending on how the server is configured, that could result in the file being stored on the server. Many servers are, in fact, configured to do so under certain circumstances, eg. attaching files to a forum post.

The GET command allows a client to retrieve files from the server. An enhancement in HTTP/1.1 over the previous HTTP/1.0 is the following, extracted from Section 9.3:

The semantics of the GET method change to a "partial GET" if the request message includes a Range header field. A partial GET requests that only part of the entity be transferred, as described in section 14.35. The partial GET method is intended to reduce unnecessary network usage by allowing partially-retrieved entities to be completed without transferring data already held by the client.

Additional quotes:

10.2.7 206 Partial Content

The server has fulfilled the partial GET request for the resource. The request MUST have included a Range header field (section 14.35) indicating the desired range, [...]

[...]

14.35.1 Byte Ranges

Since all HTTP entities are represented in HTTP messages as sequences of bytes, the concept of a byte range is meaningful for any HTTP entity. (However, not all clients and servers need to support byte- range operations.)

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  • yes, and the SOAP protocol would also be applicable here as it allows editing of the remote content. Oct 30, 2013 at 18:21
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The company Kyte had been doing this since 2006. As discussed on this page from 12/18/08, "Producers" would upload video content created from whatever device they chose, store it on Kyte's servers, and edit the content at kyte.tv. The Kyte Platform page explains how content can not only be uploaded from a computer but could be emailed from a mobile phone as an example.

So Kyte provided a way to communicate with multiple devices, store content uploaded from those devices, provided a means to manage and edit the content and distribute it from servers connected to the internet.

A Tech Crunch article in early 2011 discussed the purchase of Kyte by Kit Digital. It explained how their services were already used in the market.

As for Kyte, this company has been around since 2006 and offers a cloud-based publishing platform that enables companies to deliver live and on-demand video experiences to websites, mobile devices and connected TVs. Kyte was acquired as KIT digital plans to leverage Kyte’s proprietary platform and application frameworks to serve KIT’s global client base.

Kyte reported fiscal 2010 revenues of $3.7 million, derived primarily from SaaS platform fees. Kyte adds nearly 100 clients, including CBS, Clear Channel, FOX News, MTV, Walt Disney Company, Nokia, Publicis, Swatch, Oprah Winfrey, and ESPN Europe.

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YouTube video editor and Special:Upload on all MediaWiki installations - www.mediawiki.org

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    This video on youtube was posted in 2010. It shows how to use the YouTube video editor - essentially editing videos on their server aka cloud using a web browser. youtube.com/watch?v=klANjwTxF6s
    – Siraj K
    Aug 19, 2013 at 20:52
  • The feature list on youtube.com/editor would be sufficient to prove there is an existing prior art.
    – Siva Tumma
    Aug 31, 2013 at 15:01
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PKZIP 2.0, released in 1993, added the ability to automatically split Zip archives across multiple files. (This was also the version which introduced the famous Deflate compression algorithm.)

This was intended to allow a large archive to be split across multiple floppy disks, but the same technique was commonly used on the Internet in the days of dial-up modems, to minimise the lost time when a modem hung up unexpectedly. The technique predates the HTTP protocol mentioned in my other answer, and was (and still is) used on Usenet.

Many other archiving programs also contain splitting functionality, including StuffIt (commonly used on Macintosh) and WinRAR.

On UNIX (and Linux) systems, the 'split' and 'cat' programs are included as part of the core system, and can be used to perform this functionality on any file, whether it is an archive or not. There is also a 'csplit' program, which tries to break text files more neatly by looking for newlines. The 'csplit' program appears in the Single UNIX Specification Issue 2, which was published in 1997.

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The proposed Memex system does most if not all of this, it was defined back in 1945 !!!

Experimental implementations of the concept -- such as NLS -- were created in the 1950's and 60's. Extensive implementations of various kinds where created starting in the 80's.

Oxford University: The Computer Journal
Article: HYPERTEXT - Moving Towards Large Volumes
Published Volume 32 Issue 6 December 1989
Author: I. RITCHIE
url: http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/6.toc

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