Destination application program interfaces

• US 20050132168A1
• Filed: 12/11/2003
• Published: 06/16/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 12/11/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Weiss, Rebecca C., Sherwani, Adil, Sather, Dale A., Debique, Kirt A., Grigorovitch, Alexandre V., Speed, Robin C.B., Wilson, Mei L.
• Granted Patent: US 7,735,096 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 712/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4488 Object-oriented

Abstract

Media processing methods, systems and application program interfaces (APIs) in which a destination component, also referred to as a destination, provides an application with a simple and unified way of rendering, archiving, broadcasting (or other types of media output processing) media from an origin to a target of choice, without requiring the application to have intimate knowledge about underlying components, their connectivity and management. For example, applications can use a destination to help manage the rendering or archiving (or other processing) of the particular media.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

one or more computer-readable media; and

a component embodied on the one or more computer-readable media, the component to communicatively interact with an application and a media engine to present a presentation the component to selectively provide information to the media engine describing where and how media content is to be presented in response to an access by the media engine.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the component exposes an application program interface that is used by the application to interact directly with the component.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the component defines where the presentation is to be presented.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the component provides an object with information that the media engine uses to obtain a media sink component.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the component is to receive information associating an input media stream with a presentation output media stream.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the component contains a plurality of sub-components, each sub-component being related to an output media stream to be presented in the presentation.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein information contained in the component can be changed while the presentation is being presented.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the component is to signal the media engine that information contained in the component is being changed.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the component is to selectively signal the media engine in response to an operation by the application.

10. The system of claim 4, wherein the component resides in a computing device and the media sink component resides in another computing device.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the component is to selectively provide information to the media engine related to a presentation clock that allows the application to control the presentation independently of other media content being presented in the presentation.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the component exposes an application program interface (API) implementing a method that is defined to have:

an input argument that is a pointer to a descriptor of a stream of media content to be presented in the presentation;

another input argument that is a pointer to a media type to be used in presenting the stream of media content; and

an output argument that is a pointer to an object containing information regarding where and how media content is to be presented.

13. The system of claim 6, wherein the component exposes an application program interface (API) that is selectively used by the application to change how many sub-components are contained in the component.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the component is to selectively provide outputs for subsequent presentations originating from the media source in a “

timeline”

-style presentation.

28. The system of claim 1, wherein the component is to selectively provide a series of outputs to the media engine for a series of presentations that occur during a session.

29. The system of claim 28, wherein the component selectively provides an output multiple times as part of the series of outputs.

30. The system of claim 10, wherein the component is to signal the media engine that a connection or change therein has occurred between the computing devices.

31. The system of claim 5, wherein the component is to receive information associating an input media stream with a presentation output media stream without involvement of the application.

15. A method for use by an application in presenting a presentation, the method comprising:

selectively providing information describing media content to be presented in the presentation to a media engine in response to an operation by the media engine; and

selectively providing information related to an object containing information regarding how the presentation is to be presented to the media engine, wherein the media engine selectively manages the presentation without requiring further interaction with the application.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising exposing an application program interface that is used by the application to interact indirectly with media sink components of the media engine.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the object contains information used by the media engine to determine where the presentation is to be presented.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the object contains information that the media engine uses to obtain a media sink component.

19. The method of claim 15, further comprising receiving information associating an input media stream with a presentation output media stream to be presented in the presentation.

20. The method of claim 15, further comprising obtaining information related to a plurality of output media streams for which a given input media stream is intended in response to a request from the media engine and returning a collection of the obtained information to the media engine.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising changing how many output media streams are present in the plurality of output media streams in response to an operation by the application.

22. The method of claim 15, further comprising changing at least a portion of selectively provided information while the presentation is being presented.

23. The method of claim 22, further comprising signaling the media engine that the at least a portion of information is being changed while the presentation is being presented.

24. The method of claim 23, selectively signaling the media engine in response to an operation by the application.

25. The method of claim 15, wherein the presentation is presented in a client device and the application resides in a server device.

26. The method of claim 15, further comprising selectively providing information to the media engine related to a presentation clock that allows the application to control the presentation independently of other media content being presented in the presentation.

27. The method of claim 15, wherein selectively providing information describing media content and selectively providing information related to an object comprises using an application program interface (API) implementing a method that is defined to have:

an input argument that is a pointer to a descriptor of a stream of media content to be presented in the presentation;

another input argument that is a pointer to a media type to be used in presenting the stream of media content; and

an output argument that is a pointer to the object.