Method and apparatus for instant playback of a movie title

• US 8,312,161 B2
• Filed: 02/03/2010
• Issued: 11/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NBC Universal Media LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Vudu Incorporated (Comcast Corporation)
• Inventors: Ganesan, Prasanna
• Primary Examiner(s): JEAN, FRANTZ B
• Application Number:
  US12/699,848
• Publication Number:
  US 20100254675A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,014 Days
• Field of Search: 709/231, 709/236, 725/115, 725/135, 725/143, 725/145, 711/129, 348/E5.008, 717/169, 386/29, 386/95, 386/109, 386/353
• US Class Current: 709/231
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 7/01 Probabilistic graphical models, e.g. probabilistic networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1091 Interfacing with client-server systems or between P2P systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/632 using a connection between clients on a wide area network, e.g. setting up a peer-to-peer communication via Internet for retrieving video segments from the hard-disk of other client devices broadcast-related systems characterised by transmission among terminal devices H04H60/80; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17336 Handling of requests in head-ends

Abstract

Techniques for fragmenting a file or a collection of media data are disclosed. According one aspect of the techniques, a file pertaining to a title is fragmented into a header and several tails or segments. The header is a continuous portion of the file while the segments are respective parts of the remaining portion of the file. The header is seeded substantially in all boxes, and none, one or more of the segments are distributed in each of the boxes in service. When a title is ordered, the header is instantly played back while the segments, if not locally available, are continuously fetched respectively from other boxes that have the segments.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

one or more processors; and

a non-transitory computer readable medium coupled to the one or more processors, the medium storing instructions, that when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to;

divide a file pertaining to a title into a sequence of data blocks, the sequence of data blocks partitioned into a first portion and a second portion, where each of the data blocks includes at least several Kbytes;

form a header from the data blocks in the first portion, the data blocks in the header being consecutive, wherein a data size of the header is predetermined to ensure a smooth playback of the title at a remote device; and

form N segments from the data blocks in the second portion, where N is a finite integer, wherein each of the N segments includes a different set of data blocks so that every N-th data block is included in one of the N segments and the data blocks in each of the N segments are nonconsecutive.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the file is a collection of audio and video data.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors and the medium are part of a server, and the system further comprises:

one or more remote devices coupled to a network and configured to request, to the server, the title for play back.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the header is locally cached in each of the one or more remote devices in service as a residing object, and M of the N segments are distributed as distributed objects in each of the one or more remote devices, wherein M varies between 0 and N from one of the one or more remote devices to another.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the data size of the header is determined so that, when the title is played back at one of the one or more remote devices that requested play back, the header lasts long enough to start receiving the M segments from one or more of the one or more remote devices.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the data size of the header is extended to include extra play back time for synchronizing the M segments being received from the one or more of the one or more remote devices.

7. The system of claim 3, wherein the data size of the header is based, at least in part, on a minimum uploading speed or a minimum downloading speed of the network.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the medium further stores instructions to cause the one or more processors to divide the file into even sizes of data blocks in the second portion.

9. The system of claim 4, wherein at least one of the one or more remote devices is configured to download data at a rate, D, and wherein a downloading on the at least one of the one or more remote devices is affected by one or more interruptions that cause the at least one of the one or more remote devices to not receive data for a period of time X.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the data size of the header is dynamically defined to account of possible abnormal conditions in the network, the data size being at least D*X+Max (over all times t>

=X) [byte offset for corresponding frame −

D*t].

11. The system of claim 4, wherein the data size of the header is statistically determined in a region to have enough data to account for irregularities in downloading the M segments from one or more of the one or more remote devices.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the header includes at least three sections of data, each section being specifically provided to deal with a particular irregularity.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the three sections include an A/V data buffer, a downstream jitter buffer, and an upstream jitter buffer.

14. The system of claim 4, wherein the data size of the header is dynamically determined with respect to a particular title and a respective one of the one or more remote devices in which the header is to be cached.