SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR THE AUTOMATIC SEGMENTATION AND CLUSTERING OF ORDERED INFORMATION

Techniques segmenting ordered information such as audio, video and text are provided by windowing and parameterizing an ordered information stream and storing of the parameterized and windowed information into a two-dimensional representation such as a matrix. The similarity between the parameter vectors is determined and an orthogonal matrix decomposition such as singular value decomposition is applied to the similarity matrix. The singular values or eigenvalues of the resulting decomposition indicate major components or segments of the ordered information. The boundaries of the major components may be determined using the determined singular vectors to provide, for example, smart cut-and-paste of ordered information in which boundaries are automatically identified by the singular vectors; automatic categorization and retrieval of ordered information and automatic summarization of ordered information.