Methods, systems, devices, and computer-program products are described herein for providing dynamic content serving. The dynamic content serving technology can identify, in real-time, programming arriving at a client device, identify a specific media segment being received and/or displayed, and determine which pre-stored substitute media segment may be used to replace the identified segment. A picture-in-picture channel can be used to display the substitute media segment.

Customized highlight shows for sporting events, entertainment events, and/or the like, having a narrative component, are generated and presented. The events can be sporting events, entertainment events, and/or the like. For example, in the context of sporting events, a determination is made as to what types of sports, teams, leagues, players, plays, and/or the like are of interest to the user. A customized highlight show is then generated and presented, containing those specific portions of the sporting events that are likely to be of interest, arranged in a manner that is likely to be entertaining and interesting to the user and that presents a cohesive narrative.

Delivery of high quality video in an adaptive bit rate (ABR) download session is achieved using obtained using lower quality communication paths. The method involves detecting that an ABR download session of a video is in a steady-state condition. If so a further determination is made as to whether there is sufficient pre-fetch time available to download an (N+1)th video segment of the video using at alternative connection path through a virtual WAN having a lower quality than a first connection path through the virtual WAN. If sufficient pre-fetch time is available, the (N+1)th video segment is prefetched using at least the second connection path instead of the first connection path.

Systems and methods for addressing a corrupted segment in a media asset. The media guidance application determines that a segment of a media asset is corrupted. The media guidance application determines whether a retrieval period to retrieve an uncorrupted copy of the segment exceeds a threshold period. If the retrieval period does not exceed the threshold period, the media guidance application retrieves and generates for display the uncorrupted copy of the segment. If the retrieval period exceeds the threshold period, the media guidance application determines whether an importance level of the corrupted segment exceeds a threshold level. If the importance level exceeds the threshold level, the media guidance application generates for display a summary for the corrupted segment. If the importance level does not exceed the threshold level, the media guidance application generates for display the subsequent segment and the summary for the corrupted segment in an overlay.

Disclosed are a video processing method and apparatus, and a storage medium. The method includes: receiving a selection instruction of having selected one or more video streams or key frames of the one or more video streams to be browsed; setting video stream thumbnails generated from the one or more video streams or key frame thumbnails generated from the key frames to a scene thumbnail to generate a picture layout stream according to the selection instruction, where the scene thumbnail is generated according to a scene displayed in an augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) interface; and presenting the picture layout stream in the VR/AR interface, and providing a virtual layout interface of multiple video stream pictures.

A method for monitoring and correcting playback performance for content player. The method includes detecting a content player request from a media player on a user device, the content player request corresponding to a content item request from a server, generating a playback identifier including data corresponding to the content item, detecting one or more playback events occurring during playback of the content by the content player, generating one or more playback packets including the playback identifier, a packet identifier, and the one or more playback events, and transmitting the one or more playback packets to a server.

Provided are a target character video clip playing method, system and apparatus, and a storage medium. The method comprises: using image recognition technology to perform target character recognition on an entire video, positioning a plurality of video clips containing target characters, and obtaining a first playing time period set corresponding to the video clips; according to audio clips corresponding to each character marked within the entire video, obtaining a second playing time period set corresponding to the audio clips of the various characters; merging the time periods included in the playing time period sets, and obtaining a sum playing time period set of the target characters; according to a sorting of various playing timelines within the sum playing time period set, performing video playing of the target characters.

A computer-implemented method of identifying whether a target video comprises an abridged version of a reference video includes evaluating condition a) that the target video does not comprise all shots of the reference video; condition b) that the target video includes groups of consecutive shots also included in the reference video; and condition c) that all shots which are present in both the target video and the reference video are in the same order. The method further includes identifying whether the target video comprises an abridged version of the reference video; and outputting a result of the identifying. The target video is identified as comprising an abridged version of the reference video on condition that conditions a), b) and c) are met. Also provided is a data processing apparatus for performing the method; and a computer program and computer readable storage medium comprising instructions to perform the method.

A method for multicasting multimedia content to receivers, the method comprising: receiving, by a multicast middleware (MCMF) from a server (BMS), manifest files to access contents according to different adaptive bitrate streaming communication protocols, one of the manifest files being consistent with the MPEG-DASH protocol and describing media segments of a content, another of the manifest files being a master playlist consistent with the HLS protocol and defining locations where media playlists to access the media segments of the content are available; receiving, by the middleware from the server, the media segments of the content, transmitted in a multicast session, receiving, by the middleware from the server, the playlists, the received playlists referencing the media segments transmitted in the multicast session, and currently received by the middleware; and storing by the middleware the manifest files, the media segments and the playlists, to make them available to receivers (UD, UD1, UD2).

A method of providing a content stream based on capturing an initial delivery of the content stream. The method comprises obtaining manifest data related to the initial delivery of the content stream, the manifest data being obtained one or more times in a sequence during the initial delivery of the content stream to generate one or more manifest files; associating a time-stamp with each of the manifest files, the time stamp being indicative of a time of obtaining the associated manifest file; processing each of the manifest files to identify one or more addresses referenced in the manifest file of one or more segments comprising a portion of the content stream in the initial delivery; accessing one or more of the segments identified via the one or more addresses referenced in the manifest files; modifying a last one of the manifest files to include at least a portion of an earlier manifest file of the manifest files; and providing a client with access to the manifest files including the modified last manifest file and the accessed one or more segments, thereby enabling the client to receive at least a portion of the content stream.